So you want to sell out Taiwan to your masters in the Chinese Communist Party.
Worse, the sleaze claims that his justification was the 'Formosan Sea Goddess' or some such appearing in a dream: he clearly believes that his country are even dumber than him and that's saying something.
That reminds me of our politicians saying "Jesus told me to run for prez!"
This is like saying the Republican Party in its current incarnation is the party of Lincoln. Dude, systems change, shit change. I'm not giving a value assessment here, just that one can't judge the mechanisms of a political system for things that occurred more than 70 years ago.
Cheques are expensive tho, at least her in Norway, and slow, I don't get why they are so popular in the US, would someone care to explain that? Tanks for the info
Maybe because here in the US cheques are neither expensive, nor slow, slow being relative to our modus operandi. Some systems and nations work better with one medium than others.
Ever tried coming to a local branch and withdrawing more than 5K? In Canada, where I am they will tell you that they don't have that much and that you have to call them in advance next time. So much for it being "your money". The truth is those rules are not made for your protection. The protect the bank from (a) robberies, (b) bank runs.
Which transitively protects you (specially with reason #b.)
>"Even if true, that doesn't free you from the responsibility to lead by example. PS: China has banned plastic bags.Most of Africa has banned plastic bags (four years prison in Kenya!). Has your country."
Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean. We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly. Banning plastic bags (and straws) here would change very, very little in waste except make it more inconvenient for most people. If you don't want to use them, nobody is forcing you to... bring/use your own reusable bags and straws.
I imagine styrofoam is more of a problem, anyway.
Before you spout such nonsense, I suggest you travel the world and visit a few developed countries to make up an educated comparison in where we are when it comes to recycling at the micro and macro level.
Bro, you forgot to factor in regional costs of living. In some areas $2/day is enough to live well out of poverty.
I agree that the different costs of living are an important consideration. Do you personally know that $2/day is enough to subsist in any part of China, or have you read such numbers anywhere? That's where my skepticism lies. That China has made breathtaking advances in lifting many of its people out of poverty is obvious. That $2/day is a useful threshold for setting the poverty level is nowhere near as obvious.
It's the same in every country, even here in the US. A single person making $30K/year would be one cunt-hair close to living in the gutter in, say, San Francisco or Miami.
That same gross income would make the same person live well above the poverty line in Sebring, FL.
Yes, there are obviously differences in costs of living from region to region within any country. However, there are minimal costs of living in any area. In the US, the official poverty level for a single person in the contiguous 48 states is $12,140. I personally lived below the official poverty level growing up in a cheap area in the US. It's possible but not easy.
The question for this thread is what a useful poverty level should be for China. I've visited Beijing as a tourist and found the city to be nowhere near cheap, i.e., there's no way anyone could come close to living in Beijing on $2/day. How much do the costs of living fall when living in the countryside? I have no personal experience, and I couldn't google any data on this. However, although we might have visions of dirt-poor Chinese peasants who can live on 10% or 1% of what people in the cities pay, what are the real numbers? Absent even anecdotal accounts, I'm skeptical about the $2/day poverty level for any one specific location in China, let alone as a national poverty level.
A $2/day is certainly not applicable in Beijing or any of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier metropolitan areas, but it does work in rural areas. I grew up in a poor country,Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere actually. You could actually put a roof over your head and eat 3 meals on $2/day if you live in the rural east/south east regions of the country. However, it's barely enough on the north, certainly insufficient in the capital or the urban centers on the Western coast of the country.
Two dollars a day can be a good amount of moolah depending on where you live (this is particularly true if you have a home garden where you raise chickens or a mono-culture or two, which is typical in rural areas in China, Nicaragua and many other developing countries.)
You are right, that we need to define what's enough to live above poverty in Rural China (or rather, the many Rural Chinas that exist.) But that to me is no evidence that a $2/day is not enough for some of those regions.
Also remember that Communist regimes *lie*, wholesale, about their economies. Robert Heinlein wrote, decades ago, about the fraudulent population and economic claims of the USSR after he and his wife visited and found no sign of the booming shipyards, rails, or family growth they claimed after WWII. We see the same sort of nonsense now from both Russia and China, as borne out by observable date *not* filtered through their press: light from population and industry caputed by night-time satellite photos.
Well, China's system does not qualify as a communist system (or even state) at all.
And it's not only them. Just look at us under the 45, we are winning, bigly, trade wars, so easy to win, eat coal for breakfast and shit rolls of dollars and gold pellets.
That will certainly incentivize their largest market - US consumers - to buy products from India instead of China.
Nah, we are just going to start blaming Indians for losing factories jobs... and we'll find a way to do retroactively, for job losses related to NAFTA or something. Then we'll start a trade war with them, cuz, you know, we are both awesome and also victims looking for a culprit and shit like that. That's how we roll.
You can be forgiven for thinking that, because it was not that long ago what you say was true and you don't get a lot of news about China in the mainstream press.
But these days the poverty rate has been driven to 3.1 percent, because China has been working really hard to live the very poorest out of poverty.
Now China is of course known to cook some books, but even with that factored in they are far from having 2/3 of China below the poverty line these days.
It's not a matter of cooking books but cooking definitions. The poverty level often used for such breathtaking advancements in Chinese poverty eradication is an income of less than $2/day. Yes, earning around $500-600 per year is considered above the poverty level. This particular definition allows the China government to aim "to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020".
Are you considering poverty strictly on daily gross income without taking into account regional costs of living?
Word of advice: don't.
Bro, you forgot to factor in regional costs of living. In some areas $2/day is enough to live well out of poverty.
It's the same in every country, even here in the US. A single person making $30K/year would be one cunt-hair close to living in the gutter in, say, San Francisco or Miami.
That same gross income would make the same person live well above the poverty line in Sebring, FL.
The CCP is run by those people. Many of the people sitting in the national congress are billionaires. They make members of the US senate look poor.
Nope. The CPP allows those people to milk shit till it changes its mind and throws them a wrench. It's one of the reasons why a lot R&D or international deals get torpedoed, for you never know when the CPP will decide they don't like your business model (even though they were ok or even funded it before.) There are a few books written on this subject.
I am not saying the CPP is good or better than the JD'S chief-asshole-officer, but the CPP can and will do something if it perceives something has the power to produce a backlash. Not because it cares about people (they don't or if they do, they do it in a very paternalistic, authoritarian way).
The do, and will do, because it exists to exercise and perpetuate its control and power. In many ways, the CPP resembles the bad shit written and prophesied in "1984."
I suspect the CCP and the single party idea has the same broad support that we have here. Only 26 percent voted for Trump, and this isn't a Trump thing, this is every presidency. Half of people just don't even bother, because it's an obvious scam. I think China must be the same way. The idea that the CCP has broad support is basically a media-created mirage. Most people see this mirage, at least subconsciously, as the scam that it is. But, being practical, they simply work within their cage to try their best to live a life. It's sad really. At least our cage is bigger for now...
Uh, ok, but nothing in my post can be interpreted as making that assertion, not without going to extreme contortions of the written word.
If you have the option, get it delivered to your workplace. This is my standard method for anything of significant value. A secretary is always there to sign for it and hold it until I can run it to my car.
Yes, this is what I do whenever I have an employer that lets me. It's the best option.
Also, Amazon also have pick up places not far away from my house, but not necessarily in my way of commuting. It's a toss-up.
Stealing packages out of my front door is no different from stealing mail out of my mailbox...
Stealing US Postal mail, unlike stealing non-USPS packages, is a felony prosecuted by the feds. FYI.
I know. The thing is, it is a lot easier to track things stolen off one's doorstep than from a mailbox located further out. I have cameras that can check who steals them off my doorstep, but I can't (physically) have the same set up for my mailbox.
Having Amazon (or Ebay or whoever sends me packages) work with LEOs to tackle this problem, I embrace, even though I acknowledge the icky factor of big companies partnering up with law agencies in the form of tracking.
Conspiracy theories appeal to humans because we are pattern-seeking machines that find connections in randomness. But few stop to ask why there is randomness.
Totally (I must steal this quote.)
With that said, the other explanation is that DARPA by itself does not work so embedded in the machinations of government. It has one mandate: foster and fund R&D, explore interesting problems and develop cool shit (specially cool shit no one else can because of production costs) independently of political climates (to the extend possible.)
The thing is, my brain also loves sugar. My whole body needs some sugar during a long run. Et cetera. "Slow carbs" (starch) are not a complete replacement (and even those are partially broken down to sugars in the mouth). I try not to overdo it and not to use sugar to compensate for boredom/fatigue/sadness like most people, but totally cutting out sugar just doesn't work.
A carb-intensive activity like running changes the equation, but for most sedentary people or people who works out less than moderate daily, "refined" carbs are addictive (and most people are on a carbs surplus.)
I went through the same cravings when I started cutting refined carbs and sugars. The body is used to go for them carbs right out of the bat, and that's your mind telling you "shit, something changed, bring it all back to whatever normal state I'm used to."
Refined carbs are effing addictive. Once you get off them and you feed yourself some health mono unsaturated fats, and proportional amounts of meats and fibrous vegetables, the body adapts and the mind realizes you ain't gonna die of starvation.
Obviously it sucks balls during the first days and weeks. It makes you moody and cranky and all kinds of shit. But hey, it's a simple symptom of withdrawal.
Unless you are a marathoner or are doing strenuous exercises (crossfit, body building, figure/fitness, power/olympic lifting or what not), you neither need more than the equivalent of 2-3 apples a day, nor eat rice, breads or legumes more than once or twice a week.
Fill your stomach with baked zucchini cut/diced and mixed with pesto, and after a while your mind won't even noticed that you haven't eaten an apple or rice in months.
A plane option on the other hand could land, reload, and launch same day, and require basically refueling, no massive retrofit.
Yes, I can't wait to watch it launch once a year for about two years before they never fly it again.
That's a possible scenario, but at this stage, it is too early to tell. This is just Alpha (though a very impressive Alpha). There's a shitload of factors, many of them non-technical that will determine if this approach takes off (no pun intended) or not.
JD's boss: Shut up plebe! Now lift me up in my palanquin.
That's what the boss is asking for. Not that I'm a fan of the CCP, but sooner or later the CCP is going to do something about it, not after the goodness of the chairman's heart but to prevent a backslash on the high-value-added service industry (that happens to be effing critical for its end goals of economic growth.)
Even by China's standards, JD's boss sounds like a damned asshole. It takes a lot of effort to stand out like that.
I have a better plan: Amazon talks to their shipping partner and tells them to ring the doorbell and actually deliver the package to a person, instead of leaving it on the porch. And if they're not paying enough for that, they should pay them more.
Bad idea. Stealing packages out of my front door is no different from stealing mail out of my mailbox, and I shouldn't have to be forking extra money in my shipping costs so that Amazon can pay shipping companies the xtra cost of face-to-face delivery.
Additionally, for many of us who are out of homes most of the day, it is extremely inconvenient to have to limit our purchases to face-to-face deliveries only. This is an inane requirement that can not be easily met by the average customer. Just think about it.
I understand the possible implications (the ever present slippery slope of a big tech behemoth partnering with law enforcing agencies, but I find this to be an splendid idea.
It's either that or us customers having to mount security/honey-pot-package systems to track theft of our own purchases at an extra cost just because some fuckers can't help themselves with other people's shit.
I'm not a fan of some of Amazon's practices, but I'm on board with this.
If politicians could demonstrate an accurate understanding of science and technology, perhaps we could trust them to regulate it....
But, um, no.
Maybe we should elect different politicians? Or even better, some of us who know (or think that know) this shit might run for office.
Till then, all we do is doubt everything and resist reflectively.
I mean, yeah, our political class is shit, but then, what does that make us? At the end of the day, we do need some regulation for the googles and facebooks in this country. And that will happen one way or another, so we better start wising the fuck up and take a more active part in the political system if we want to have a voice in how this shit goes down.
Slashdot Mirror
So you want to sell out Taiwan to your masters in the Chinese Communist Party.
Worse, the sleaze claims that his justification was the 'Formosan Sea Goddess' or some such appearing in a dream: he clearly believes that his country are even dumber than him and that's saying something.
That reminds me of our politicians saying "Jesus told me to run for prez!"
Not familiar with the kuomintang, are you?
This is like saying the Republican Party in its current incarnation is the party of Lincoln. Dude, systems change, shit change. I'm not giving a value assessment here, just that one can't judge the mechanisms of a political system for things that occurred more than 70 years ago.
Cheques are expensive tho, at least her in Norway, and slow, I don't get why they are so popular in the US, would someone care to explain that? Tanks for the info
Maybe because here in the US cheques are neither expensive, nor slow, slow being relative to our modus operandi. Some systems and nations work better with one medium than others.
Ever tried coming to a local branch and withdrawing more than 5K? In Canada, where I am they will tell you that they don't have that much and that you have to call them in advance next time. So much for it being "your money". The truth is those rules are not made for your protection. The protect the bank from (a) robberies, (b) bank runs.
Which transitively protects you (specially with reason #b.)
>"Even if true, that doesn't free you from the responsibility to lead by example. PS: China has banned plastic bags.Most of Africa has banned plastic bags (four years prison in Kenya!). Has your country."
Our country (USA) is responsible for almost none of the plastic in the ocean. We do lead by example by generally not littering, by reusing bags, by recycling them, and by disposing of them properly. Banning plastic bags (and straws) here would change very, very little in waste except make it more inconvenient for most people. If you don't want to use them, nobody is forcing you to... bring/use your own reusable bags and straws.
I imagine styrofoam is more of a problem, anyway.
Before you spout such nonsense, I suggest you travel the world and visit a few developed countries to make up an educated comparison in where we are when it comes to recycling at the micro and macro level.
IIRC, it would have been too early for first generation stellar nucleosynthesis to generate oxygen.
And by that definition then Helium Hydride would be a compound, too.
Compound rather than molecule
All compounds are molecules (but not vice versa.)
Bro, you forgot to factor in regional costs of living. In some areas $2/day is enough to live well out of poverty.
I agree that the different costs of living are an important consideration. Do you personally know that $2/day is enough to subsist in any part of China, or have you read such numbers anywhere? That's where my skepticism lies. That China has made breathtaking advances in lifting many of its people out of poverty is obvious. That $2/day is a useful threshold for setting the poverty level is nowhere near as obvious.
It's the same in every country, even here in the US. A single person making $30K/year would be one cunt-hair close to living in the gutter in, say, San Francisco or Miami.
That same gross income would make the same person live well above the poverty line in Sebring, FL.
Yes, there are obviously differences in costs of living from region to region within any country. However, there are minimal costs of living in any area. In the US, the official poverty level for a single person in the contiguous 48 states is $12,140. I personally lived below the official poverty level growing up in a cheap area in the US. It's possible but not easy.
The question for this thread is what a useful poverty level should be for China. I've visited Beijing as a tourist and found the city to be nowhere near cheap, i.e., there's no way anyone could come close to living in Beijing on $2/day. How much do the costs of living fall when living in the countryside? I have no personal experience, and I couldn't google any data on this. However, although we might have visions of dirt-poor Chinese peasants who can live on 10% or 1% of what people in the cities pay, what are the real numbers? Absent even anecdotal accounts, I'm skeptical about the $2/day poverty level for any one specific location in China, let alone as a national poverty level.
A $2/day is certainly not applicable in Beijing or any of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd tier metropolitan areas, but it does work in rural areas. I grew up in a poor country ,Nicaragua, the 2nd poorest country in the Western Hemisphere actually. You could actually put a roof over your head and eat 3 meals on $2/day if you live in the rural east/south east regions of the country. However, it's barely enough on the north, certainly insufficient in the capital or the urban centers on the Western coast of the country.
Two dollars a day can be a good amount of moolah depending on where you live (this is particularly true if you have a home garden where you raise chickens or a mono-culture or two, which is typical in rural areas in China, Nicaragua and many other developing countries.)
You are right, that we need to define what's enough to live above poverty in Rural China (or rather, the many Rural Chinas that exist.) But that to me is no evidence that a $2/day is not enough for some of those regions.
Also remember that Communist regimes *lie*, wholesale, about their economies. Robert Heinlein wrote, decades ago, about the fraudulent population and economic claims of the USSR after he and his wife visited and found no sign of the booming shipyards, rails, or family growth they claimed after WWII. We see the same sort of nonsense now from both Russia and China, as borne out by observable date *not* filtered through their press: light from population and industry caputed by night-time satellite photos.
https://www.investors.com/poli...
Well, China's system does not qualify as a communist system (or even state) at all.
And it's not only them. Just look at us under the 45, we are winning, bigly, trade wars, so easy to win, eat coal for breakfast and shit rolls of dollars and gold pellets.
I recommend watching Hans Rosling, its quite insightful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Dude, that's one of the best things I've ever seen. I typically don't give thanks in /., but shit dude, thanks for sharing that!
That will certainly incentivize their largest market - US consumers - to buy products from India instead of China.
Nah, we are just going to start blaming Indians for losing factories jobs... and we'll find a way to do retroactively, for job losses related to NAFTA or something. Then we'll start a trade war with them, cuz, you know, we are both awesome and also victims looking for a culprit and shit like that. That's how we roll.
2/3 of China is below the poverty line
You can be forgiven for thinking that, because it was not that long ago what you say was true and you don't get a lot of news about China in the mainstream press.
But these days the poverty rate has been driven to 3.1 percent, because China has been working really hard to live the very poorest out of poverty.
Now China is of course known to cook some books, but even with that factored in they are far from having 2/3 of China below the poverty line these days.
It's not a matter of cooking books but cooking definitions. The poverty level often used for such breathtaking advancements in Chinese poverty eradication is an income of less than $2/day. Yes, earning around $500-600 per year is considered above the poverty level. This particular definition allows the China government to aim "to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020".
Are you considering poverty strictly on daily gross income without taking into account regional costs of living?
Word of advice: don't.
Bro, you forgot to factor in regional costs of living. In some areas $2/day is enough to live well out of poverty.
It's the same in every country, even here in the US. A single person making $30K/year would be one cunt-hair close to living in the gutter in, say, San Francisco or Miami.
That same gross income would make the same person live well above the poverty line in Sebring, FL.
Do better when creating headlines. This is as close at it gets to being a lazy click-bait without becoming one.
The CCP is run by those people. Many of the people sitting in the national congress are billionaires. They make members of the US senate look poor.
Nope. The CPP allows those people to milk shit till it changes its mind and throws them a wrench. It's one of the reasons why a lot R&D or international deals get torpedoed, for you never know when the CPP will decide they don't like your business model (even though they were ok or even funded it before.) There are a few books written on this subject.
I am not saying the CPP is good or better than the JD'S chief-asshole-officer, but the CPP can and will do something if it perceives something has the power to produce a backlash. Not because it cares about people (they don't or if they do, they do it in a very paternalistic, authoritarian way).
The do, and will do, because it exists to exercise and perpetuate its control and power. In many ways, the CPP resembles the bad shit written and prophesied in "1984."
I suspect the CCP and the single party idea has the same broad support that we have here. Only 26 percent voted for Trump, and this isn't a Trump thing, this is every presidency. Half of people just don't even bother, because it's an obvious scam. I think China must be the same way. The idea that the CCP has broad support is basically a media-created mirage. Most people see this mirage, at least subconsciously, as the scam that it is. But, being practical, they simply work within their cage to try their best to live a life. It's sad really. At least our cage is bigger for now...
Uh, ok, but nothing in my post can be interpreted as making that assertion, not without going to extreme contortions of the written word.
If you have the option, get it delivered to your workplace. This is my standard method for anything of significant value. A secretary is always there to sign for it and hold it until I can run it to my car.
Yes, this is what I do whenever I have an employer that lets me. It's the best option.
Also, Amazon also have pick up places not far away from my house, but not necessarily in my way of commuting. It's a toss-up.
Stealing US Postal mail, unlike stealing non-USPS packages, is a felony prosecuted by the feds. FYI.
I know. The thing is, it is a lot easier to track things stolen off one's doorstep than from a mailbox located further out. I have cameras that can check who steals them off my doorstep, but I can't (physically) have the same set up for my mailbox.
Having Amazon (or Ebay or whoever sends me packages) work with LEOs to tackle this problem, I embrace, even though I acknowledge the icky factor of big companies partnering up with law agencies in the form of tracking.
Conspiracy theories appeal to humans because we are pattern-seeking machines that find connections in randomness. But few stop to ask why there is randomness.
Totally (I must steal this quote.)
With that said, the other explanation is that DARPA by itself does not work so embedded in the machinations of government. It has one mandate: foster and fund R&D, explore interesting problems and develop cool shit (specially cool shit no one else can because of production costs) independently of political climates (to the extend possible.)
DARPA is one thing I deeply respect.
The thing is, my brain also loves sugar. My whole body needs some sugar during a long run. Et cetera. "Slow carbs" (starch) are not a complete replacement (and even those are partially broken down to sugars in the mouth). I try not to overdo it and not to use sugar to compensate for boredom/fatigue/sadness like most people, but totally cutting out sugar just doesn't work.
A carb-intensive activity like running changes the equation, but for most sedentary people or people who works out less than moderate daily, "refined" carbs are addictive (and most people are on a carbs surplus.)
I went through the same cravings when I started cutting refined carbs and sugars. The body is used to go for them carbs right out of the bat, and that's your mind telling you "shit, something changed, bring it all back to whatever normal state I'm used to."
Refined carbs are effing addictive. Once you get off them and you feed yourself some health mono unsaturated fats, and proportional amounts of meats and fibrous vegetables, the body adapts and the mind realizes you ain't gonna die of starvation.
Obviously it sucks balls during the first days and weeks. It makes you moody and cranky and all kinds of shit. But hey, it's a simple symptom of withdrawal.
Unless you are a marathoner or are doing strenuous exercises (crossfit, body building, figure/fitness, power/olympic lifting or what not), you neither need more than the equivalent of 2-3 apples a day, nor eat rice, breads or legumes more than once or twice a week.
Fill your stomach with baked zucchini cut/diced and mixed with pesto, and after a while your mind won't even noticed that you haven't eaten an apple or rice in months.
Do a better job when creating headlines. C'mon slashdotters, you should know better by now.
A plane option on the other hand could land, reload, and launch same day, and require basically refueling, no massive retrofit.
Yes, I can't wait to watch it launch once a year for about two years before they never fly it again.
That's a possible scenario, but at this stage, it is too early to tell. This is just Alpha (though a very impressive Alpha). There's a shitload of factors, many of them non-technical that will determine if this approach takes off (no pun intended) or not.
JD's boss: Shut up plebe! Now lift me up in my palanquin.
That's what the boss is asking for. Not that I'm a fan of the CCP, but sooner or later the CCP is going to do something about it, not after the goodness of the chairman's heart but to prevent a backslash on the high-value-added service industry (that happens to be effing critical for its end goals of economic growth.)
Even by China's standards, JD's boss sounds like a damned asshole. It takes a lot of effort to stand out like that.
I have a better plan: Amazon talks to their shipping partner and tells them to ring the doorbell and actually deliver the package to a person, instead of leaving it on the porch. And if they're not paying enough for that, they should pay them more.
Bad idea. Stealing packages out of my front door is no different from stealing mail out of my mailbox, and I shouldn't have to be forking extra money in my shipping costs so that Amazon can pay shipping companies the xtra cost of face-to-face delivery.
Additionally, for many of us who are out of homes most of the day, it is extremely inconvenient to have to limit our purchases to face-to-face deliveries only. This is an inane requirement that can not be easily met by the average customer. Just think about it.
I understand the possible implications (the ever present slippery slope of a big tech behemoth partnering with law enforcing agencies, but I find this to be an splendid idea.
It's either that or us customers having to mount security/honey-pot-package systems to track theft of our own purchases at an extra cost just because some fuckers can't help themselves with other people's shit.
I'm not a fan of some of Amazon's practices, but I'm on board with this.
If politicians could demonstrate an accurate understanding of science and technology, perhaps we could trust them to regulate it.... But, um, no.
Maybe we should elect different politicians? Or even better, some of us who know (or think that know) this shit might run for office.
Till then, all we do is doubt everything and resist reflectively.
I mean, yeah, our political class is shit, but then, what does that make us? At the end of the day, we do need some regulation for the googles and facebooks in this country. And that will happen one way or another, so we better start wising the fuck up and take a more active part in the political system if we want to have a voice in how this shit goes down.