I'm currently looking into replacing my gas furnace with a heat pump, powered by a combination of solar-, wind-, and hydro-generated electricity.
The negative is that my winter heating costs will double.
Maybe, maybe not; it entirely depends on the relative prices of electricity and gas in your area. I used to live in NJ and the natural gas prices there were atrocious; it would have been cheaper to heat the house with electricity (and in fact, that's what we ended up doing after we figured out how much gas heat was costing us: we turned the house heat way way down to just keep the pipes from freezing, and then used portable electric radiator-style heaters, because it was much cheaper that way).
Chevy volt, nissan leaf, i3, etc are all pure POS in which the car sales have been going down, not up as expected. In general the leaf and i3 are too weird looking and offer equal or less performance to ICE cars BY DESIGN. Interestingly, all of the electric cars could EASILY blow away ICE cars. Why do they not? Because it would gut the sales of ICE so, none of the car companies want that.
This seems like BS, I'm sorry, at least if you're referring to range. On an EV, range is solely dictated by battery capacity. Batteries are expensive; they're easily the most-expensive component on a Tesla. If it weren't for the battery cost, we'd all be driving EVs now, because everything else on an EV is either the same or cheaper or not needed, compared to a gas car (brakes/steering/suspension: same; radiator/transmission: not needed; electric motor: cheaper than complicated ICE). Tesla's pushing down the battery costs, but it's taking a while. Unless I'm missing something, it simply isn't economically possible to build an EV under $30k with 200+ mile range, and it's all because of the batteries. Tesla has good range, but their car costs over $100k too.
You could be right about them being a top 5 carmaker within a decade, though, since they have a first-mover advantage, while the other carmakers have been doing little to nothing with EV technology. It's hard to say, though; it wouldn't be that hard for an existing company to jump on the bandwagon, since so many parts of a car are the same with EV propulsion (just not the engine). And IIRC Tesla gave out free access to their patented technology so that'll make it even easier.
How long does it take to recharge to get that range back?
Not very long. You can plug the car in overnight at home so it's ready to go the next day for your daily commute, or you can go to a Supercharger station and recharge in 30 minutes. You do need to stop and use the bathroom and eat, don't you?
I take 2 or 3 trips a year touring
Simple answer: if stopping for 30 minutes at a Supercharger station is a problem for you, then rent a car for your rare trips. Or, use your other car. You do have two cars, don't you (assuming you're married/in a relationship)? Anyone rich enough to afford an EV of any kind, and who isn't single, has two cars in their family.
which gets about 200 miles per tank
What kind of shitty car do you have that only gets 200 miles per tank? Any decent car these days can go 3-400 miles per tank. If all you can afford is a 1975 AMC Gremlin, then no, an EV probably isn't in your budget.
1) Range - short range compared to 250 or 300 miles of ICE cars.
My new Mazda has a range of over 400 miles. However, the Tesla Model S has a 200-250 mile range, so it's really not that far off. Of course, the Model S also costs over $100k for the one with that range.
2) Price - Why do EVs cost 2x or more compared to ICE cars when EVs have fewer amount of hardware components?
It's mostly in the batteries, and partly in the lack of competition. Tesla's the only really serious EV builder, and the other entries are kinda lame and some of them are just "compliance models", meant to appease government regulators and show them "look, we're trying to sell EVs, but no one wants them!"
If there were more automakers making serious EVs, and pushing the battery suppliers to do better, we'd see somewhat lower prices, and better progress in pushing prices down and performance (range, recharge time, etc.) up.
Internal combustion folks (heh!) will NEVER ever like EVs. You can say EVs are three times more efficient, or that the byproducts are easily dealt with -- it doesn't matter. The guys have a Mechanical Engineering diploma... in their minds, fsck electricity!
Which is really ridiculous, considering how much electronics and software are involved in running modern ICEs.
According to a responder here, the Leaf's price is closer to $30k. And the Leaf is butt-ugly, and looks and drives like an econobox. A comparable gas car is probably about $15k, if not less. Crappy suspension and handling, cheap interior materials, lack of features; you're not getting much for your money that way.
That's the problem with EVs now; they're much more expensive than comparable gas cars. I've driven a Tesla Model S, and it's a great car, but it also cost $108,000. I just picked up a Mazda3 that has most of the features (including things like blind-spot warnings, lane-departure warnings, collision warning and automatic emergency braking, navigation, etc.) for under $30k, less than your Leaf, plus it gets over 35mpg (39mpg EPA hwy rating) and it has great power and excellent handling, maybe not quite sports-car level, but far better than a typical econobox.
When (if) Tesla comes out with their Model 3 in the mid-$30k price range, and if it has similar range to the Model S and still has good appointments compared to gas cars in that range, then we're going to see some real changes in the auto market. Electric cars are coming, it's just taking a while because of the battery cost.
See, the problem with terrorists is that they're crazy religious nutjobs. You don't become a "terrorist" by being sane, basically; to get to that state where you're willing to sacrifice your life and well-being for some cause, you have to have a serious mental condition, and religious zealotry is a good way to achieve that. And religious nutjobs don't really care about doing good things like taking out copyright trolls; they mainly care about making their religion more powerful because they think their god wants this, even if it means sacrificing their lives (which they'll of course be rewarded for in the afterlife, according to their religious leaders).
I don't really see any way of subverting a crazy religious cult to have its followers attack copyright trolls or other corporate misbehavers.
>Yes, that's how the whole world works. You really think it doesn't work that way on reddit?
Not really, no: Reddit has no "Anonymous Coward" moniker. Every user has a username, even if it's a "throwaway". It isn't quite so easy to tell these apart from the long-time users unless you're really familiar with peoples' names (or the username is something like/u/throwaway070315). Moreover, Slashdot specifically has a feature to ignore posts by ACs, so a lot of users don't even see posts by anonymous users at all. Reddit has no such thing.
You can come up with a throwaway identity on almost any site.
You can, but it's easier to do in practice on some sites than on others. It's not that easy to do here on Slashdot; on Reddit it's almost trivial, and the RES makes it even easier to switch between identities with a couple of mouse clicks. Reddit doesn't require email confirmation and all that crap like (I believe) Slashdot and other sites do, which also causes them to limit you to one identity per email account. Yes, you can just go set up a bunch of one-time-use email accounts, but again that's a PITA, unless you're a professional troll and you have a semi-automated system set up for that.
As for Reddit and its gems/turds ratio, it really depends on the subreddit. They're all different, since they're run by different mods, with different rules, and different groups of people in them. It's not like Slashdot, where there's only one user community, and we pretty much all see the same articles; on Reddit, everyone sees a different version of the site, and sees different articles, depending on which subreddits they're subscribed to. With 250,000 subreddits, there really is not a singular "Reddit community", though there certainly are some subreddits which are extremely popular and might be considered somewhat representative. I can see all kinds of horrible posts in/r/politics, for instance, but then go over to/r/embeddedlinux and see nothing but polite, well-thought out posts (but not too many of them, since it's a small group with only 646 readers).
The mods have nothing to lose by fucking up you site if you mess with them. They can move to a new site tomorrow. Maybe if being a mod was a payed job you could tell them what to do.
If being a mod was a paid job, most likely the mods would not be trusted much, just like the (paid) admins are not right now. The only way communities like Reddit work is when the users don't see the people in charge as having a profit motive which overrides all sense of ethics and decency. This is why open-source software is usually trusted so much more than commercial software to not have malware embedded and to respect its users (with some exceptions of course, but these, like Gnome3, usually stem from philosophical disagreements, not suspicion that someone is screwing the users over for profit). No one but a fool trusts Adobe or various other commercial software providers to not include bloated spyware in their software to somehow make money on users (after charging them first for the product itself), but not many people distrust GIMP and think it's doing the same. They may disagree on some technical aspects of the software and its UI, but because software like this is made by a community of mostly volunteers and not a single for-profit corporation, it has a level of trust which commercial providers simply will never earn.
For a more relevant example, just look at this site: we even have a word for many "stories" posted here: "Slashvertisements". No one really trusts the leadership here any more, because it's obviously been hijacked by for-profit corporate interests, namely Dice Inc. Reddit appears to be going the same direction.
This would have been an OK thing to ask 10 years ago here. But these days, Slashdot is chock full of assholes, shills, right-wing extremists, and just trash in general. Very few worthwhile people are left here any more.
So you're one of those losers who wrecks their plane with their relatives in it because you have no experience and no ability to fly by instrument and get killed because you think you can fly by the seat of your pants.
People shouldn't even be allowed to fly with only a private license. If you can't fly at the standard of a commercial pilot, you have no business piloting an airplane.
Exactly: is it better to have pop-ups from your nav system telling you when and where to turn, or is it better to fumble with a paper map, or drive around endlessly in circles lost, or pulling over and stopping constantly to ask some codger for inaccurate directions (and then getting lost again because the directions were bad)?
I like HUD, but I think that GPS-enabled cruise control (with camera backup) is the best way to handle avoiding excessive speed with technology. The hardware for that is in most cars now.
You can't use cruise control (of any kind) on most non-highway roads. If you're driving through town on a road with stoplights, cruise control is obviously not safe to use there. However, that may be a place that's a favorite spot for cops.
On a highway, you have a good point, but cops do not only issue speeding tickets on limited-access highways.
Downside on the latest one is it will display some radio information (station freq. or CD track number) when you make a change to the radio settings - they don't "stick" for very long. I suppose the idea is to keep the driver's eyes up rather than looking at the center stack for radio settings, but I could live without that info on the screen.
That's exactly the idea. It's better for you to get a quick update (esp. if you're actively adjusting the radio) on your HUD, rather than divert your attention to a different device on the dashboard that requires you to refocus your attention. If you're used to the vehicle and don't need the information, it should be easy for you to mentally ignore it.
I don't know about the OP, but my new Mazda3 has this feature as well. There's a HUD (it projects onto a piece of clear plastic that sits in the driver's view right on top of the instrument panel), and it also has a FOW (forward object warning) system which changes the HUD display to "BRAKE" with an alarm sound if it senses an impending collision.
The HUD itself I find very useful, because it doesn't require me to refocus my eyes much to see it, and has useful information: the current speed, the set speed for cruise control, if the cruise control detects a car ahead, what the following distance is set to, if lane-departure warnings are enabled, and arrows from the nav system telling me when to turn.
I can see how some people might think it's distracting to constantly see your speed like that, but that's a product of our idiotic insistence on arbitrary and overly-low speed limits with harsh penalties for violations. Instead of watching the road for dangers and generally driving safely at a speed we're comfortable with, we need to constantly compare our driving speed to the allowed speed and make sure we aren't going more than, say, 5mph over. Of course, on the highway you can set the cruise control and not worry about it so much, but on surface streets CC isn't such a great idea for obvious reasons, and those are also the roads where you're more likely to need to swerve or brake to avoid a collision. So to anyone complaining about this stuff being distracting, go complain to the cops about it, they're the reason for it.
But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist.
We've completely strayed from that topic in this sub-discussion, and are just talking about why things are the way they are.
You're absolutely right: FB, Google, etc. have little control over this stuff. To change it requires changing society in a big way, and it'll take decades for the changes to really bear fruit. These companies can't hire engineers who don't exist, and to create them would require getting to kids when they're really young and changing their environment.
Being "racist" doesn't mean you're a white supremacist necessarily, it just means you treat people differently based on their race, and that you have certain assumptions about races.
It's a very common assumption in America today that blacks and hispanics are stupid and prone to joining gangs, and that Asians are smart and successful. So anyone operating under those assumptions is naturally going to treat black suspects poorly, and Asian suspects well. Of course, like many stereotypes, the statistics kinda back up these assumptions, but that's the problem with racism (or any generalization): just because a group of people exhibits certain behavior on average doesn't mean every individual in that group conforms to it. Some poor smart black kid in the ghetto who wants to go to college and study CS can be easily screwed over (by the cops, the schools, etc.) because he lives around a bunch of dumb thugs.
The woeful underperformance of AAs is because of historical inertia and ongoing racism that comes from it (such as people like you who make generalizations, and then everyone in that group is forever screwed because they can't overcome these generalizations). African immigrants don't have the same historical problems that AAs have; they leapfrog over those problems.
Think about it: suppose you can either be born a dumb white boy in a middle-class family, or a dumb black boy in a ghetto. Which lifetime is going to be better? As a dumb black boy, you'll probably end up joining a gang or getting involved in some other criminal pursuit because of your peers in that area, the lack of opportunities, etc. As a dumb white boy, you'll still go to a pretty decent school, get a diploma, your dad will probably help you find a decent job, etc. I knew a guy in high school who wasn't all that bright (he wasn't stupid really, but he wasn't scholastically smart, and got put into the lower-level classes for non-college-bound kids). His dad was really smart and an engineer, and set up a business for them to work on together, so when this guy graduated high school, he just continued the business (internet sales) and made really good money and bought himself a really nice upper-middle-class house; he never went to college or had to work in some shit job like someone else with his educational background. Some poor black kid would never have had an opportunity like that.
Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school.
Oh please, this is a load of horse shit.
Public schools are not the same everywhere. That's exactly why they tried that whole "busing" scheme (which they're still doing in some places I believe). Schools are run at the local level, not the federal level, and are comprised of students from the local area, and teachers willing to work at that school, so schools in rich districts are good and well-funded, while schools in poor districts are full or problems and have terrible funding, and worse, good teachers don't want to work there because it's too dangerous. Yes, a lot of students in poor places aren't exactly great students and frequently engage in criminal behavior, but for those who would like to be good students, this is not a good environment for them, and it sure as hell isn't equivalent to the school environment in a rich district. A white student in an upper-middle-class district doesn't have to worry about peer pressure to join a gang or having good teachers and the academic credentials needed to pass the SAT and get into college.
Then that sounds like something specific to California. In most other places, your property tax can go up any time, whenever the county decides to re-assess.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm currently looking into replacing my gas furnace with a heat pump, powered by a combination of solar-, wind-, and hydro-generated electricity.
The negative is that my winter heating costs will double.
Maybe, maybe not; it entirely depends on the relative prices of electricity and gas in your area. I used to live in NJ and the natural gas prices there were atrocious; it would have been cheaper to heat the house with electricity (and in fact, that's what we ended up doing after we figured out how much gas heat was costing us: we turned the house heat way way down to just keep the pipes from freezing, and then used portable electric radiator-style heaters, because it was much cheaper that way).
Chevy volt, nissan leaf, i3, etc are all pure POS in which the car sales have been going down, not up as expected. In general the leaf and i3 are too weird looking and offer equal or less performance to ICE cars BY DESIGN. Interestingly, all of the electric cars could EASILY blow away ICE cars. Why do they not? Because it would gut the sales of ICE so, none of the car companies want that.
This seems like BS, I'm sorry, at least if you're referring to range. On an EV, range is solely dictated by battery capacity. Batteries are expensive; they're easily the most-expensive component on a Tesla. If it weren't for the battery cost, we'd all be driving EVs now, because everything else on an EV is either the same or cheaper or not needed, compared to a gas car (brakes/steering/suspension: same; radiator/transmission: not needed; electric motor: cheaper than complicated ICE). Tesla's pushing down the battery costs, but it's taking a while. Unless I'm missing something, it simply isn't economically possible to build an EV under $30k with 200+ mile range, and it's all because of the batteries. Tesla has good range, but their car costs over $100k too.
You could be right about them being a top 5 carmaker within a decade, though, since they have a first-mover advantage, while the other carmakers have been doing little to nothing with EV technology. It's hard to say, though; it wouldn't be that hard for an existing company to jump on the bandwagon, since so many parts of a car are the same with EV propulsion (just not the engine). And IIRC Tesla gave out free access to their patented technology so that'll make it even easier.
How long does it take to recharge to get that range back?
Not very long. You can plug the car in overnight at home so it's ready to go the next day for your daily commute, or you can go to a Supercharger station and recharge in 30 minutes. You do need to stop and use the bathroom and eat, don't you?
I take 2 or 3 trips a year touring
Simple answer: if stopping for 30 minutes at a Supercharger station is a problem for you, then rent a car for your rare trips. Or, use your other car. You do have two cars, don't you (assuming you're married/in a relationship)? Anyone rich enough to afford an EV of any kind, and who isn't single, has two cars in their family.
which gets about 200 miles per tank
What kind of shitty car do you have that only gets 200 miles per tank? Any decent car these days can go 3-400 miles per tank. If all you can afford is a 1975 AMC Gremlin, then no, an EV probably isn't in your budget.
No, the transmission needs no modification; EVs don't need a transmission at all. The Model S only has a single-speed gearbox.
1) Range - short range compared to 250 or 300 miles of ICE cars.
My new Mazda has a range of over 400 miles. However, the Tesla Model S has a 200-250 mile range, so it's really not that far off. Of course, the Model S also costs over $100k for the one with that range.
2) Price - Why do EVs cost 2x or more compared to ICE cars when EVs have fewer amount of hardware components?
It's mostly in the batteries, and partly in the lack of competition. Tesla's the only really serious EV builder, and the other entries are kinda lame and some of them are just "compliance models", meant to appease government regulators and show them "look, we're trying to sell EVs, but no one wants them!"
If there were more automakers making serious EVs, and pushing the battery suppliers to do better, we'd see somewhat lower prices, and better progress in pushing prices down and performance (range, recharge time, etc.) up.
Internal combustion folks (heh!) will NEVER ever like EVs. You can say EVs are three times more efficient, or that the byproducts are easily dealt with -- it doesn't matter. The guys have a Mechanical Engineering diploma... in their minds, fsck electricity!
Which is really ridiculous, considering how much electronics and software are involved in running modern ICEs.
According to a responder here, the Leaf's price is closer to $30k. And the Leaf is butt-ugly, and looks and drives like an econobox. A comparable gas car is probably about $15k, if not less. Crappy suspension and handling, cheap interior materials, lack of features; you're not getting much for your money that way.
That's the problem with EVs now; they're much more expensive than comparable gas cars. I've driven a Tesla Model S, and it's a great car, but it also cost $108,000. I just picked up a Mazda3 that has most of the features (including things like blind-spot warnings, lane-departure warnings, collision warning and automatic emergency braking, navigation, etc.) for under $30k, less than your Leaf, plus it gets over 35mpg (39mpg EPA hwy rating) and it has great power and excellent handling, maybe not quite sports-car level, but far better than a typical econobox.
When (if) Tesla comes out with their Model 3 in the mid-$30k price range, and if it has similar range to the Model S and still has good appointments compared to gas cars in that range, then we're going to see some real changes in the auto market. Electric cars are coming, it's just taking a while because of the battery cost.
See, the problem with terrorists is that they're crazy religious nutjobs. You don't become a "terrorist" by being sane, basically; to get to that state where you're willing to sacrifice your life and well-being for some cause, you have to have a serious mental condition, and religious zealotry is a good way to achieve that. And religious nutjobs don't really care about doing good things like taking out copyright trolls; they mainly care about making their religion more powerful because they think their god wants this, even if it means sacrificing their lives (which they'll of course be rewarded for in the afterlife, according to their religious leaders).
I don't really see any way of subverting a crazy religious cult to have its followers attack copyright trolls or other corporate misbehavers.
>Yes, that's how the whole world works. You really think it doesn't work that way on reddit?
Not really, no: Reddit has no "Anonymous Coward" moniker. Every user has a username, even if it's a "throwaway". It isn't quite so easy to tell these apart from the long-time users unless you're really familiar with peoples' names (or the username is something like /u/throwaway070315). Moreover, Slashdot specifically has a feature to ignore posts by ACs, so a lot of users don't even see posts by anonymous users at all. Reddit has no such thing.
You can come up with a throwaway identity on almost any site.
You can, but it's easier to do in practice on some sites than on others. It's not that easy to do here on Slashdot; on Reddit it's almost trivial, and the RES makes it even easier to switch between identities with a couple of mouse clicks. Reddit doesn't require email confirmation and all that crap like (I believe) Slashdot and other sites do, which also causes them to limit you to one identity per email account. Yes, you can just go set up a bunch of one-time-use email accounts, but again that's a PITA, unless you're a professional troll and you have a semi-automated system set up for that.
As for Reddit and its gems/turds ratio, it really depends on the subreddit. They're all different, since they're run by different mods, with different rules, and different groups of people in them. It's not like Slashdot, where there's only one user community, and we pretty much all see the same articles; on Reddit, everyone sees a different version of the site, and sees different articles, depending on which subreddits they're subscribed to. With 250,000 subreddits, there really is not a singular "Reddit community", though there certainly are some subreddits which are extremely popular and might be considered somewhat representative. I can see all kinds of horrible posts in /r/politics, for instance, but then go over to /r/embeddedlinux and see nothing but polite, well-thought out posts (but not too many of them, since it's a small group with only 646 readers).
The mods have nothing to lose by fucking up you site if you mess with them. They can move to a new site tomorrow.
Maybe if being a mod was a payed job you could tell them what to do.
If being a mod was a paid job, most likely the mods would not be trusted much, just like the (paid) admins are not right now. The only way communities like Reddit work is when the users don't see the people in charge as having a profit motive which overrides all sense of ethics and decency. This is why open-source software is usually trusted so much more than commercial software to not have malware embedded and to respect its users (with some exceptions of course, but these, like Gnome3, usually stem from philosophical disagreements, not suspicion that someone is screwing the users over for profit). No one but a fool trusts Adobe or various other commercial software providers to not include bloated spyware in their software to somehow make money on users (after charging them first for the product itself), but not many people distrust GIMP and think it's doing the same. They may disagree on some technical aspects of the software and its UI, but because software like this is made by a community of mostly volunteers and not a single for-profit corporation, it has a level of trust which commercial providers simply will never earn.
For a more relevant example, just look at this site: we even have a word for many "stories" posted here: "Slashvertisements". No one really trusts the leadership here any more, because it's obviously been hijacked by for-profit corporate interests, namely Dice Inc. Reddit appears to be going the same direction.
This would have been an OK thing to ask 10 years ago here. But these days, Slashdot is chock full of assholes, shills, right-wing extremists, and just trash in general. Very few worthwhile people are left here any more.
all the current refugees from there are bringing the stupid mindless liberal idiocy with them, trying to "Californicate" Nevada
Yes, because things like equal rights for black people is such a horrible concept. **rollseyes**
So you're one of those losers who wrecks their plane with their relatives in it because you have no experience and no ability to fly by instrument and get killed because you think you can fly by the seat of your pants.
People shouldn't even be allowed to fly with only a private license. If you can't fly at the standard of a commercial pilot, you have no business piloting an airplane.
New pilots' are always glued to the instruments, mature pilots eyes are focused outside except for quick scans of the instruments.
I guess you'll never be an instrument-rated pilot.
Exactly: is it better to have pop-ups from your nav system telling you when and where to turn, or is it better to fumble with a paper map, or drive around endlessly in circles lost, or pulling over and stopping constantly to ask some codger for inaccurate directions (and then getting lost again because the directions were bad)?
I like HUD, but I think that GPS-enabled cruise control (with camera backup) is the best way to handle avoiding excessive speed with technology. The hardware for that is in most cars now.
You can't use cruise control (of any kind) on most non-highway roads. If you're driving through town on a road with stoplights, cruise control is obviously not safe to use there. However, that may be a place that's a favorite spot for cops.
On a highway, you have a good point, but cops do not only issue speeding tickets on limited-access highways.
Downside on the latest one is it will display some radio information (station freq. or CD track number) when you make a change to the radio settings - they don't "stick" for very long. I suppose the idea is to keep the driver's eyes up rather than looking at the center stack for radio settings, but I could live without that info on the screen.
That's exactly the idea. It's better for you to get a quick update (esp. if you're actively adjusting the radio) on your HUD, rather than divert your attention to a different device on the dashboard that requires you to refocus your attention. If you're used to the vehicle and don't need the information, it should be easy for you to mentally ignore it.
I don't know about the OP, but my new Mazda3 has this feature as well. There's a HUD (it projects onto a piece of clear plastic that sits in the driver's view right on top of the instrument panel), and it also has a FOW (forward object warning) system which changes the HUD display to "BRAKE" with an alarm sound if it senses an impending collision.
The HUD itself I find very useful, because it doesn't require me to refocus my eyes much to see it, and has useful information: the current speed, the set speed for cruise control, if the cruise control detects a car ahead, what the following distance is set to, if lane-departure warnings are enabled, and arrows from the nav system telling me when to turn.
I can see how some people might think it's distracting to constantly see your speed like that, but that's a product of our idiotic insistence on arbitrary and overly-low speed limits with harsh penalties for violations. Instead of watching the road for dangers and generally driving safely at a speed we're comfortable with, we need to constantly compare our driving speed to the allowed speed and make sure we aren't going more than, say, 5mph over. Of course, on the highway you can set the cruise control and not worry about it so much, but on surface streets CC isn't such a great idea for obvious reasons, and those are also the roads where you're more likely to need to swerve or brake to avoid a collision. So to anyone complaining about this stuff being distracting, go complain to the cops about it, they're the reason for it.
How the fuck is someone supposed to move when they're in poverty and have no money to go anywhere? You are a fucking asinine asshole.
But back on topic, how is this facebook or google's problem? Facebook can't hire people that don't exist.
We've completely strayed from that topic in this sub-discussion, and are just talking about why things are the way they are.
You're absolutely right: FB, Google, etc. have little control over this stuff. To change it requires changing society in a big way, and it'll take decades for the changes to really bear fruit. These companies can't hire engineers who don't exist, and to create them would require getting to kids when they're really young and changing their environment.
-1 Stupid.
Being "racist" doesn't mean you're a white supremacist necessarily, it just means you treat people differently based on their race, and that you have certain assumptions about races.
It's a very common assumption in America today that blacks and hispanics are stupid and prone to joining gangs, and that Asians are smart and successful. So anyone operating under those assumptions is naturally going to treat black suspects poorly, and Asian suspects well. Of course, like many stereotypes, the statistics kinda back up these assumptions, but that's the problem with racism (or any generalization): just because a group of people exhibits certain behavior on average doesn't mean every individual in that group conforms to it. Some poor smart black kid in the ghetto who wants to go to college and study CS can be easily screwed over (by the cops, the schools, etc.) because he lives around a bunch of dumb thugs.
The woeful underperformance of AAs is because of historical inertia and ongoing racism that comes from it (such as people like you who make generalizations, and then everyone in that group is forever screwed because they can't overcome these generalizations). African immigrants don't have the same historical problems that AAs have; they leapfrog over those problems.
Think about it: suppose you can either be born a dumb white boy in a middle-class family, or a dumb black boy in a ghetto. Which lifetime is going to be better? As a dumb black boy, you'll probably end up joining a gang or getting involved in some other criminal pursuit because of your peers in that area, the lack of opportunities, etc. As a dumb white boy, you'll still go to a pretty decent school, get a diploma, your dad will probably help you find a decent job, etc. I knew a guy in high school who wasn't all that bright (he wasn't stupid really, but he wasn't scholastically smart, and got put into the lower-level classes for non-college-bound kids). His dad was really smart and an engineer, and set up a business for them to work on together, so when this guy graduated high school, he just continued the business (internet sales) and made really good money and bought himself a really nice upper-middle-class house; he never went to college or had to work in some shit job like someone else with his educational background. Some poor black kid would never have had an opportunity like that.
Black youth are given the same opportunities that every other youth is given. They can attend public school.
Oh please, this is a load of horse shit.
Public schools are not the same everywhere. That's exactly why they tried that whole "busing" scheme (which they're still doing in some places I believe). Schools are run at the local level, not the federal level, and are comprised of students from the local area, and teachers willing to work at that school, so schools in rich districts are good and well-funded, while schools in poor districts are full or problems and have terrible funding, and worse, good teachers don't want to work there because it's too dangerous. Yes, a lot of students in poor places aren't exactly great students and frequently engage in criminal behavior, but for those who would like to be good students, this is not a good environment for them, and it sure as hell isn't equivalent to the school environment in a rich district. A white student in an upper-middle-class district doesn't have to worry about peer pressure to join a gang or having good teachers and the academic credentials needed to pass the SAT and get into college.
Then that sounds like something specific to California. In most other places, your property tax can go up any time, whenever the county decides to re-assess.
That's great if you're a big bank. If you're an individual, good luck getting a 0% loan on anything besides perhaps a car.