There has been nothing transported that was not previously possible on a dirt track (ask the guys who transported the stones that made the pyramids).
It's impossible to transport the fully assembled space shuttle from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad on a dirt path. There would be multiple problems: it's too wide for a dirt path, it's heavy enough to sink into the dirt*, and it's tall enough to topple over if one hits a patch of unevenness**.
*Or the swamp on either side if the wideness issue isn't resolved first **Or when one side sinks more than the other if weight issue isn't resolved first
It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.
Check again. CA has neither the highest property tax nor highest sales tax. Property tax is actually in the lower 1/3 of all states.
Personally, I don't shop at small stores because I have no idea that they exist or what inventory they have. But I also don't like shopping at the huge stores because I end up spending a lot of time moving from one area to the next to find what I'm looking for. It's much easier to check out a few shopping websites and accept that it'll take a few days to arrive.
If all of the smaller stores could get together and put their real-time inventory on a website somewhere, then at least I would know what they're selling.
If you're the owner of a long-vacant retail space, you're making $0 from it. If you lower the rent by 50% and find a retailer, you will be making more than $0. So either the owners are retarded, or there's something else preventing retailers from setting up shop, such as excessive regulations or usage restrictions.
There's evidence that video games can improve cognitive function. For example, a show called Mind Field had an episode where the host tested his maze-solving abilities before and after playing video games for a week. The result was a clear improvement in spatial awareness.
This makes sense because video games are just simulations of some aspect of the real world, and the player is essentially practicing how to behave in those situations.
Anecdotally speaking, Kerbal Space Program taught me how to calculate orbital transfer windows and suicide burn timing, while Factorio taught me how to solve network flow problems. Granted, I don't expect most people to pick up calculus or linear programming from games, but just being engaged with something mentally challenging will produce benefits of some kind.
Thank you for actually providing a citation. Though I hesitate to trust the actual numbers from an article written by an "Associate Professor of Sustainable Development" on a clearly conservationist website.
Wind is cheaper than coal now, and that's without the health impacts of pollution.
Yet I didn't see any wind farms when I was traveling across India. Beating coal not a particularly high achievement, nor is it all that useful. Even in the US, coal power is dying because it's much cheaper to use natural gas. If wind was cheap and reliable, people would be crawling over each other to build more of it.
The 30% population drop in Europe around the black death had impact on civilization, as skills were lost, and communities, child care and cultural norms broke down.
That's not exactly an effect of climate change.
Well, except "ice age", yes. Food shortage. Biodiversity loss. Disease. People Displacement. Famine. War.
"Ice age" in Europe is actually one predicted consequence of climate change due to a potential shutdown of the gulf stream. Infectious disease and war happens no matter what the climate is. Being displaced is not lethal to most people. Biodiversity loss isn't either.
Food shortage and famine are two sides of the same thing, and would be an actual concern if it manifested itself. However in first world countries, we produce so much more than what we eat that most of it goes to waste. Moreover, data from the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum shows higher CO2 concentrations lead to a warmer and wetter world, with significantly more foliage cover than today. Vast swaths of land are currently unusable due to freezing temperatures, including the majority of Russia and Canada, and due to dryness, such as the Middle east and the Sahara. Once those places thaw and receive rain, we will have even more arable land than we do today.
Name a specific threat caused by climate change and I can find a point in time where stone-age humans survived that. If anything, it's rapid climate change that created humans in the first place.
Besides, we're not exactly a normal apex predator given how we can eat everything and the majority of our calories come from plants.
Extinction Is a bad thing because it denies humanity access to the living thing and its ecosystem as a scientific resource.
So the only negative there is that scientific progress might be slower?
It is also a bad thing because we are a long way from understanding the interconnectedness of the global ecosystem, so we don't know which extinction will be followed by the extinction of a very important pollinator or competitor or predator of a pathogen that will lead to the impacts for us or important domestic or agricultural species.
We can find out which species are pollinators and ensure they are unaffected. Actually those insects would be just fine if we just stop spaying insecticide on them. We already provide them with an abundant food source. And if their competitor or predator goes extinct, that's even better.
Extinction aside, drops in biomass of things like 98% are indicative of a collapse of productivity of the land. Humans already use about 30% more resources per year than the world produces.
What does that even mean? We can only consume 100% of what we produce. Who's making the extra 30%? Can you provide a citation?
while intensive farming techniques and cheap energy are bringing billions of people out of poverty
Great for them, but not relevant to the impact on humanity of the loss of some of the world's ecosystems.
One leads to the other. You can't have both. All climate change solutions I've seen so far are only affordable to people living a middle class lifestyle in a first world country.
After every mass extinction, a large number of ecological niches become available for new species to occupy, leading to an explosion of biodiversity.
Right. But that won't help humanity. The problems we face will hit crunch point in the next thousand years. Probably early in that time.
What problems specifically? Bad weather? Fires? Ice age? Desertification? Sea level rise?
Yeah those all suck, but none of those are extinction-level threats to humans. Prehistoric humans survived all of those with stone-age technology, and I'd say we're a little bit more advanced now.
You can even say that the evolution of complex life on Earth is driven by mass extinction events.
It's worth looking into whether something can be done, but panic is neither justified nor helpful.
Even if the study's conclusions are correct and we lose some insects and some animals that eat them. So what? How many people will die as a result?
The few insect species that we do rely on are nowhere near extinction, while intensive farming techniques and cheap energy are bringing billions of people out of poverty, of whom a significant percentage would have died due to the lack of food, clean water or healthcare. Any proposal to fix the problem must take the needs of those people into account, or it simply won't be implemented.
Besides, there's nothing to panic about when it comes to the ecosystem either. Regardless of what humans do, life will continue on Earth as it has for billions of years. After every mass extinction, a large number of ecological niches become available for new species to occupy, leading to an explosion of biodiversity. You can even say that the evolution of complex life on Earth is driven by mass extinction events.
It'll probably also fail on people who are angry, but aren't shouting it. E.g. "I've said everything that can be said. You will refund me, or you will see your entrails hanging out of your body by tomorrow. Have a good day sir."
Nice jobs only pay more if the skill level required is higher.
After controlling for skill level, the bad jobs pay more. Compare tax software devs with video game devs for example, Intuit pays 50% more than EA, and 25% more than Blizzard.
The trial is limited by its length as well as choice of participants.
From the article:
From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).
Very few people would stop looking for work, or even consider a career change for the equivalent an $8000 check. If I wanted to start a business, I would need at least 2-3 years of savings, and if the business fails, I'd want something to tide me over until I find a new job. If I were to change careers to do something I think is beneficial to mankind, but doesn't pay much, such as teaching, I'd want enough to last me to retirement.
The other problem is that unemployed people are already looking for jobs. The reason they don't have one is because they can't find one. Giving them money makes no difference. To see the economic effects of UBI, you'd have to give it to the entire population, which in turn stimulates demand and thus business and job growth.
If they want to do a proper study, it should be 20 years, with a representative sample of individuals from all walks of life. An effort should be made to track spending habit changes, which would inform us on the potential wider economic impact.
Sudden braking, people looking for the hidden speed camera vans instead of at the road, driving too slowly because they aren't sure what the limit is or don't trust the janky speed detectors
If that's the problem, then issue fines on the basis of average speed between 2 speed traps. It should be easy to calculate the speed based on the time it took to go from one to the other.
when the real ones are out my strong instinct is to keep checking the speedo rather than watching the road carefully.
Drive 5 below then, or 10 below if you're truly terrible at maintaining a speed.
Evolutionarily speaking, contraceptives and family planning has the same effect on humans as antibiotics does on bacteria. Initially the population will be reduced. However, those less affected by it will produce more progeny and in time, come to dominate the population. Eventually everyone will develop immunity to it. Now it's unlikely that we'll see it right away, but in 10, 20 or 100 generations it will come to dominate.
Of course, it's possible that we keep inventing even more effective "human antibiotics" in the meantime and keep winning against overpopulation, but that will probably not happen if we're worried about a population decline or if there are splinter groups who refuse to adopt the newer formulations.
Having tried their demo, I can tell you right away that it's not even as good as the one in Visual Studio, and only a notch better than Emacs. Guess the novelty is that it's for Python.
I have the same response to people trying to save mosquitoes from genetically engineered extinction.
There's 600,000 people on one side of the trolley track, a swarm of annoying bloodsuckers on the other, and we keep letting the trolley run over the people.
Slashdot Mirror
Given enough monkeys typing, eventually one will create the complete works of Shakespeare.
The fact that they could find one coherent example is only proof of their searching ability.
There has been nothing transported that was not previously possible on a dirt track (ask the guys who transported the stones that made the pyramids).
It's impossible to transport the fully assembled space shuttle from the vehicle assembly building to the launch pad on a dirt path. There would be multiple problems: it's too wide for a dirt path, it's heavy enough to sink into the dirt*, and it's tall enough to topple over if one hits a patch of unevenness**.
*Or the swamp on either side if the wideness issue isn't resolved first
**Or when one side sinks more than the other if weight issue isn't resolved first
That's ridiculous. If the CCP wanted to, they could've made it non-autonomous at any time. The army doesn't need high speed rail to get there.
It is amazing how little that state does, with the highest tax rates in the US, be it the highest income tax, highest property tax, and highest salex tax.
Check again. CA has neither the highest property tax nor highest sales tax. Property tax is actually in the lower 1/3 of all states.
Personally, I don't shop at small stores because I have no idea that they exist or what inventory they have. But I also don't like shopping at the huge stores because I end up spending a lot of time moving from one area to the next to find what I'm looking for. It's much easier to check out a few shopping websites and accept that it'll take a few days to arrive.
If all of the smaller stores could get together and put their real-time inventory on a website somewhere, then at least I would know what they're selling.
If you're the owner of a long-vacant retail space, you're making $0 from it. If you lower the rent by 50% and find a retailer, you will be making more than $0. So either the owners are retarded, or there's something else preventing retailers from setting up shop, such as excessive regulations or usage restrictions.
There's evidence that video games can improve cognitive function. For example, a show called Mind Field had an episode where the host tested his maze-solving abilities before and after playing video games for a week. The result was a clear improvement in spatial awareness.
This makes sense because video games are just simulations of some aspect of the real world, and the player is essentially practicing how to behave in those situations.
Anecdotally speaking, Kerbal Space Program taught me how to calculate orbital transfer windows and suicide burn timing, while Factorio taught me how to solve network flow problems. Granted, I don't expect most people to pick up calculus or linear programming from games, but just being engaged with something mentally challenging will produce benefits of some kind.
Thank you for actually providing a citation. Though I hesitate to trust the actual numbers from an article written by an "Associate Professor of Sustainable Development" on a clearly conservationist website.
Wind is cheaper than coal now, and that's without the health impacts of pollution.
Yet I didn't see any wind farms when I was traveling across India. Beating coal not a particularly high achievement, nor is it all that useful. Even in the US, coal power is dying because it's much cheaper to use natural gas. If wind was cheap and reliable, people would be crawling over each other to build more of it.
The 30% population drop in Europe around the black death had impact on civilization, as skills were lost, and communities, child care and cultural norms broke down.
That's not exactly an effect of climate change.
Well, except "ice age", yes. Food shortage. Biodiversity loss. Disease. People Displacement. Famine. War.
"Ice age" in Europe is actually one predicted consequence of climate change due to a potential shutdown of the gulf stream. Infectious disease and war happens no matter what the climate is. Being displaced is not lethal to most people. Biodiversity loss isn't either.
Food shortage and famine are two sides of the same thing, and would be an actual concern if it manifested itself. However in first world countries, we produce so much more than what we eat that most of it goes to waste. Moreover, data from the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum shows higher CO2 concentrations lead to a warmer and wetter world, with significantly more foliage cover than today. Vast swaths of land are currently unusable due to freezing temperatures, including the majority of Russia and Canada, and due to dryness, such as the Middle east and the Sahara. Once those places thaw and receive rain, we will have even more arable land than we do today.
Name a specific threat caused by climate change and I can find a point in time where stone-age humans survived that. If anything, it's rapid climate change that created humans in the first place.
Besides, we're not exactly a normal apex predator given how we can eat everything and the majority of our calories come from plants.
Extinction Is a bad thing because it denies humanity access to the living thing and its ecosystem as a scientific resource.
So the only negative there is that scientific progress might be slower?
It is also a bad thing because we are a long way from understanding the interconnectedness of the global ecosystem, so we don't know which extinction will be followed by the extinction of a very important pollinator or competitor or predator of a pathogen that will lead to the impacts for us or important domestic or agricultural species.
We can find out which species are pollinators and ensure they are unaffected. Actually those insects would be just fine if we just stop spaying insecticide on them. We already provide them with an abundant food source. And if their competitor or predator goes extinct, that's even better.
Extinction aside, drops in biomass of things like 98% are indicative of a collapse of productivity of the land. Humans already use about 30% more resources per year than the world produces.
What does that even mean? We can only consume 100% of what we produce. Who's making the extra 30%? Can you provide a citation?
while intensive farming techniques and cheap energy are bringing billions of people out of poverty
Great for them, but not relevant to the impact on humanity of the loss of some of the world's ecosystems.
One leads to the other. You can't have both. All climate change solutions I've seen so far are only affordable to people living a middle class lifestyle in a first world country.
After every mass extinction, a large number of ecological niches become available for new species to occupy, leading to an explosion of biodiversity.
Right. But that won't help humanity. The problems we face will hit crunch point in the next thousand years. Probably early in that time.
What problems specifically? Bad weather? Fires? Ice age? Desertification? Sea level rise?
Yeah those all suck, but none of those are extinction-level threats to humans. Prehistoric humans survived all of those with stone-age technology, and I'd say we're a little bit more advanced now.
You can even say that the evolution of complex life on Earth is driven by mass extinction events.
So what? How many people will live as a result?
A hint: None.
That's funny.
It's worth looking into whether something can be done, but panic is neither justified nor helpful.
Even if the study's conclusions are correct and we lose some insects and some animals that eat them. So what? How many people will die as a result?
The few insect species that we do rely on are nowhere near extinction, while intensive farming techniques and cheap energy are bringing billions of people out of poverty, of whom a significant percentage would have died due to the lack of food, clean water or healthcare. Any proposal to fix the problem must take the needs of those people into account, or it simply won't be implemented.
Besides, there's nothing to panic about when it comes to the ecosystem either. Regardless of what humans do, life will continue on Earth as it has for billions of years. After every mass extinction, a large number of ecological niches become available for new species to occupy, leading to an explosion of biodiversity. You can even say that the evolution of complex life on Earth is driven by mass extinction events.
Amusingly, the vegetarians may be doing active harm - I'll bet that good, natural grazing land has more biodiversity than a soy field.
Too bad most people eat animals raised on corn.
So when's the last time you tipped your doctor? Your auto mechanic? Or the pilot on your flight?
All three have the potential to cause your untimely demise. Shouldn't you hand over a 30% tip just to be safe?
It'll probably also fail on people who are angry, but aren't shouting it. E.g. "I've said everything that can be said. You will refund me, or you will see your entrails hanging out of your body by tomorrow. Have a good day sir."
Nice jobs only pay more if the skill level required is higher.
After controlling for skill level, the bad jobs pay more. Compare tax software devs with video game devs for example, Intuit pays 50% more than EA, and 25% more than Blizzard.
The trial is limited by its length as well as choice of participants.
From the article:
From January 2017 until December 2018, 2,000 unemployed Finns got a monthly flat payment of €560 (£490; $685).
Very few people would stop looking for work, or even consider a career change for the equivalent an $8000 check. If I wanted to start a business, I would need at least 2-3 years of savings, and if the business fails, I'd want something to tide me over until I find a new job. If I were to change careers to do something I think is beneficial to mankind, but doesn't pay much, such as teaching, I'd want enough to last me to retirement.
The other problem is that unemployed people are already looking for jobs. The reason they don't have one is because they can't find one. Giving them money makes no difference. To see the economic effects of UBI, you'd have to give it to the entire population, which in turn stimulates demand and thus business and job growth.
If they want to do a proper study, it should be 20 years, with a representative sample of individuals from all walks of life. An effort should be made to track spending habit changes, which would inform us on the potential wider economic impact.
So how much does those off-the-shelf GDPR management code cost?
And why wouldn't they be liable? They're storing information on Europeans and they may travel to Europe while the site is up.
Remember the only reason you have the WWW and that Google exists at all is thanks to the British creator of HTML and the European foundation CERN.
Do you really think nobody else would've figured out how to transmit formatted text over the internet?
That's like saying aliens wouldn't have rockets because Wernher von Braun lived on Earth.
Sudden braking, people looking for the hidden speed camera vans instead of at the road, driving too slowly because they aren't sure what the limit is or don't trust the janky speed detectors
If that's the problem, then issue fines on the basis of average speed between 2 speed traps. It should be easy to calculate the speed based on the time it took to go from one to the other.
when the real ones are out my strong instinct is to keep checking the speedo rather than watching the road carefully.
Drive 5 below then, or 10 below if you're truly terrible at maintaining a speed.
That drop will be very short-term.
Evolutionarily speaking, contraceptives and family planning has the same effect on humans as antibiotics does on bacteria. Initially the population will be reduced. However, those less affected by it will produce more progeny and in time, come to dominate the population. Eventually everyone will develop immunity to it. Now it's unlikely that we'll see it right away, but in 10, 20 or 100 generations it will come to dominate.
Of course, it's possible that we keep inventing even more effective "human antibiotics" in the meantime and keep winning against overpopulation, but that will probably not happen if we're worried about a population decline or if there are splinter groups who refuse to adopt the newer formulations.
Yeah, I'd rather have a prankster who sometimes goes too far than an ex-convict who hates society.
Maybe they'll increase it to 3000 nm and start telling people "why are you flying drones instead of watching football?"
Having tried their demo, I can tell you right away that it's not even as good as the one in Visual Studio, and only a notch better than Emacs. Guess the novelty is that it's for Python.
There's over 3500 species of mosquitoes. Research is directed at removing just a few of those species that spread disease.
I have the same response to people trying to save mosquitoes from genetically engineered extinction.
There's 600,000 people on one side of the trolley track, a swarm of annoying bloodsuckers on the other, and we keep letting the trolley run over the people.