The automation of farming was a much bigger impact to the labor market than everything else you listed. I know it's hard for you to believe because nobody has been tweeting about.
At some point, somebody very much like you said, "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce food". And they were right, but we still found plenty of jobs in manufacturing and the service industry--leading to people working fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Now you are saying "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce things"--and you're right, but warm bodies will get redistributed into other jobs, where they will work fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Many of those jobs probably sound ridiculous right now (like "life coach"), just like many of today's jobs would sound ridiculous to somebody from the agricultural economy of 1890.
There is a pretty serious problem of finding unskilled labor jobs, and managing the transition for those displaced by automation. The answer for the former almost certainly involves subsidized training/education. We don't have an answer for the latter (at least not for the bulk of people who are unwilling or unable to retrain for a different career).
There is ample evidence of social & economic collapse under communal economic systems (and you're kidding yourself if you don't think that's what UBI is, because the only way to pay for it is to tax wealth so much that it becomes de-facto communism)--and there is basically no evidence to support the theory that society cannot replace the jobs lost to technological automation. People have been predicting the latter ever since the loom and they've been wrong every time (including *right now* BTW, where the unemployment rate in the US is quite low). I'm going to predict it will never happen, and at most I'll only be wrong once.
It's not Barack Obama's fault that a lot of people were born about 65 years ago. That's why retirees (and children, btw) are excluded from the labor statistics that functional adults use (U4, U5, U6--all of which look pretty good by historical standards)--and why the Breitbart set has to manufacture some misleading metric to placate their mouthbreathing outrage junkies.
The title of TFS was "electric batteries decreased by 80% in 7 years". That's a 20% reduction per year, or ~10x every 10 years. So, if we stay on that trend then we'll see 20$/kWh in 2027 (probably a little optimistic).
> $1000 in 2050? (all using 2017 dollars) That suggests to me that electric vehicles really might be cost competetive with pure ICE in 20 or 30 or 40 years.
Why would the battery cost have to get down to $1K to be cost-competitive with gas cars? $5K would be fine for most cars, since the electric motors and whatnot really don't cost that much.
> > And if what makes you happiest is installing anti-virus software while Microsoft logs your every keystroke--then please, by all means, install Windows 10. Actually--just leave your Windows 8 computer plugged in and Microsoft will install it for you
Linux is a great server/workstation OS--but it's a pain on a consumer device. I'm long past the point in my life when I'm okay with recompiling a kernel to fix my sound. My intra-family IT work has gone down by about 95% since I've moved family members over to Macs.
So, yeah, if you want to use an un-terrible OS where everything basically works--then OSX is a pretty good choice. If you'd rather spend your life reading stackoverflow to figure out how to print to a wireless printer--then please feel free to use Linux. And if what makes you happiest is installing anti-virus software while Microsoft logs your every keystroke--then please, by all means, install Windows 10. Actually--just leave your Windows 8 computer plugged in and Microsoft will install it for you.
Turn-by-turn directions while driving are really pleasant--just a tap on your wrist before each turn and the prompt on your watch.
Quick checking of text messages or emails while in a meeting or walking (and thus not wanting to pull the phone out of my pocket). Also includes quick (one word or emoticon) responses to text messages from the wife.
Music: viewing current song, previous/next song, controlling volume
Apple Pay: quick & convenient from the watch
Quick glance at my work calendar, prompts before meetings.
---
Agreed, there's no one thing, just lots of little things you get used to.
Success and failure is hard to measure in some things (like, say, love)--but it's not at all hard to measure in business. A product is successful if it is profitable. The Apple watch is profitable, therefore it is successful. The Apple watch is more profitable than any other smartwatch, therefore it is the most successful smartwatch.
Sure, it's less profitable than the iPhone--but so is pretty much every other product in the world.
You can get a new motorcycle or a used car for $3k--both of which will get you from point A to point B. So anything beyond that is a purely indulgent fashion accessory. Any company selling these cars is a fashion company.
> >10X lower than previous NASA > Citation needed. And remember, the conversation is about TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION not cost cutting.
Lots of cites out there for cost per pound. I'd dig one up for you but what's the point? you've shifted the goalposts with your assertion that "no TRUE innovation is based on cost cutting".
The personal computer was also mostly about cost-cutting, I guess that wasn't an innovation.
> American scientists discovered that the mixture was especially effective, when previously there was no such knowledge.
Was especially effective at what? Decreasing cost per pound? I thought we weren't talking about cost. Cost is irrelevant, remember the rules you just invented like three sentences ago? Why not just do 10X more launches using the previous best booster fuel? Cost is irrelevant, right?
> If Musk found a new fuel mixture that offered significantly improved thrust, specific impulse or cost-effectiveness, I would be the first to give him credit.
Oh, cost-effectiveness is once again a permitted form of innnovation?
I don't believe you, nobody who is watching believes you, and deep down...you don't believe you, either.
And ultimately it doesn't matter--because I don't care if you think I'm a fanboi and you don't care if you're wrong.
SpaceX has a very low cost per kg into space. Lower than all the alternatives for many types of missions. >10X lower than previous NASA, and quite a bit lower than rockets from Russia. Probably not much lower than the hypothetical strawman you've offered of a non-bureaucratic rocket.
Landing rockets allows them to be re-used, which will cut the cost further. They've clearly mastered landing the rockets, next step is to recondition and reuse them--that will certainly result in lowered cost. It hasn't been reflected in that cost yet because we're talking about a new technology here.
> American scientists' discovery and refinement of aluminum-based solid rocket booster fuels.
You literally picked the easiest possible invention to debunk. Did they invent aluminum? Nope. Did they invent rockets? Nope. How about solid fuel rockets? Nope. Were they the first ones to notice that Aluminum has a high energy density? Nope.
Let's be completely fucking honest here. If Aluminum didn't exist as a solid booster fuel and then Elon Musk tweeted about it, you would be among those lining up with pitchforks claiming that he's a sleazy snake-oil salesmen taking credit for other peoples' inventions.
You don't like Elon Musk, and you absolutely hate any sniff of "tech hero worship". That's all that's happening here. You aren't that complicated. You are, however, boring.
> SpaceX has not, to my knowledge, come up with revolutionary new technologies.
Well, they cut the cost of a launch by a factor of 10, and they've landed rockets. I guess that doesn't qualify. And Tesla is releasing Model 3 at $35K, so your "toys for rich people" comment is stupid. Starting with the high-end is a perfectly reasonable strategy.
The real problems here are that:
(a) you don't understand what technology is. I mean that sincerely. You have no fucking clue. Let's try a thought experiment, name a single thing that you consider a "new technology". A single thing, from the entire history of mankind. I'll break that down into pieces and show how it was a very minor step from some previous thing. You'll then have a bit of a meltdown because by your definition there has never been a "new technology"--and I will have proven [by contradiction] that your definition of "technology" is wrong.
(b) You don't care about being wrong. You care only about shitting on people you don't like. You have an inexhaustible supply of excuses and the truth doesn't matter to you.
1. SpaceX is pretty important. Tesla is pretty important. The gigafactory is a big deal. SolarCity is a good idea. Elon Musk has been involved with several pretty important things. People take Elon Musk seriously because he is, frankly, a pretty fucking serious guy. Your petty psychological need to reject anything that smells of hero-worship is way more disturbing than any actual instances of hero worship. There is absolutely nothing absurd about calling someone a tech visionary when they are clearly a tech visionary--doesn't mean that everything he proposes is going to work out, because obviously that is a stupid standard.
2. The fact that people have been "thinking about vacuum tubes for a hundred years" is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant of all the criticism about Apple because...blah blah blah Xerox had a demo of a tablet in 1968. Invention is the combination of existing technologies to make a new, useful technology. Every invention is arguably a short step from previous inventions.
3. You say the hyperloop is silly because of track costs. The Musk proposal talks about this--it estimates costs based on large above-ground oil pipelines, very similar in materials, air tightness, and various stresses--the numbers work out for several hundreds of miles.
People there watch way too much soccer. There are fistfights in stadiums and public drunkeness. It's a distraction for their workforce. I don't personally enjoy soccer, and America seems to get along without it [for the most part], therefore I can't understand why different countries (with different cultural and historic factors) need it.
1. nobody has killed you and taken your stuff 2. your savings [denominated in dollars] isn't subject to rampant inflation 3. your job exists because of a large, diverse, functional economy 4. no other country has invaded ours and destroyed our economy
If you think #1-#4 are easy, then please point me to the other country which manages all of these at lower taxes.
I don't understand the argument that "thin phones are stupid because people are just going to put a case on it". It's still going to end up thinner than a thick phone with a case, right?
Do you think people put cases on their phones specifically to make them thicker? Maybe some, but most people use cases to protect their phone from scuffs, scratches, and cracks--all of which still apply to a thicker phone.
Build in a battery on a slim phone that covers the typical user, and then allow people to purchase a case that makes their phone thicker with a larger battery.
Slashdot Mirror
The automation of farming was a much bigger impact to the labor market than everything else you listed. I know it's hard for you to believe because nobody has been tweeting about.
At some point, somebody very much like you said, "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce food". And they were right, but we still found plenty of jobs in manufacturing and the service industry--leading to people working fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Now you are saying "pretty soon warm bodies won't be needed to produce things"--and you're right, but warm bodies will get redistributed into other jobs, where they will work fewer hours at a higher quality of life. Many of those jobs probably sound ridiculous right now (like "life coach"), just like many of today's jobs would sound ridiculous to somebody from the agricultural economy of 1890.
There is a pretty serious problem of finding unskilled labor jobs, and managing the transition for those displaced by automation. The answer for the former almost certainly involves subsidized training/education. We don't have an answer for the latter (at least not for the bulk of people who are unwilling or unable to retrain for a different career).
is that it conflicts with all of human history.
There is ample evidence of social & economic collapse under communal economic systems (and you're kidding yourself if you don't think that's what UBI is, because the only way to pay for it is to tax wealth so much that it becomes de-facto communism)--and there is basically no evidence to support the theory that society cannot replace the jobs lost to technological automation. People have been predicting the latter ever since the loom and they've been wrong every time (including *right now* BTW, where the unemployment rate in the US is quite low). I'm going to predict it will never happen, and at most I'll only be wrong once.
It's not Barack Obama's fault that a lot of people were born about 65 years ago. That's why retirees (and children, btw) are excluded from the labor statistics that functional adults use (U4, U5, U6--all of which look pretty good by historical standards)--and why the Breitbart set has to manufacture some misleading metric to placate their mouthbreathing outrage junkies.
and that's on high-end luxury cars.
What makes you think they'll be limited to 50K/year on a car that's designed for much higher manufacturing throughput?
The title of TFS was "electric batteries decreased by 80% in 7 years". That's a 20% reduction per year, or ~10x every 10 years. So, if we stay on that trend then we'll see 20$/kWh in 2027 (probably a little optimistic).
> $1000 in 2050? (all using 2017 dollars) That suggests to me that electric vehicles really might be cost competetive with pure ICE in 20 or 30 or 40 years.
Why would the battery cost have to get down to $1K to be cost-competitive with gas cars? $5K would be fine for most cars, since the electric motors and whatnot really don't cost that much.
> > And if what makes you happiest is installing anti-virus software while Microsoft logs your every keystroke--then please, by all means, install Windows 10. Actually--just leave your Windows 8 computer plugged in and Microsoft will install it for you
Windows is terrible because it's Windows.
Linux is a great server/workstation OS--but it's a pain on a consumer device. I'm long past the point in my life when I'm okay with recompiling a kernel to fix my sound. My intra-family IT work has gone down by about 95% since I've moved family members over to Macs.
So, yeah, if you want to use an un-terrible OS where everything basically works--then OSX is a pretty good choice. If you'd rather spend your life reading stackoverflow to figure out how to print to a wireless printer--then please feel free to use Linux. And if what makes you happiest is installing anti-virus software while Microsoft logs your every keystroke--then please, by all means, install Windows 10. Actually--just leave your Windows 8 computer plugged in and Microsoft will install it for you.
Turn-by-turn directions while driving are really pleasant--just a tap on your wrist before each turn and the prompt on your watch.
Quick checking of text messages or emails while in a meeting or walking (and thus not wanting to pull the phone out of my pocket). Also includes quick (one word or emoticon) responses to text messages from the wife.
Music: viewing current song, previous/next song, controlling volume
Apple Pay: quick & convenient from the watch
Quick glance at my work calendar, prompts before meetings.
---
Agreed, there's no one thing, just lots of little things you get used to.
Success and failure is hard to measure in some things (like, say, love)--but it's not at all hard to measure in business. A product is successful if it is profitable. The Apple watch is profitable, therefore it is successful. The Apple watch is more profitable than any other smartwatch, therefore it is the most successful smartwatch.
Sure, it's less profitable than the iPhone--but so is pretty much every other product in the world.
You can get a new motorcycle or a used car for $3k--both of which will get you from point A to point B. So anything beyond that is a purely indulgent fashion accessory. Any company selling these cars is a fashion company.
How much did your car cost?
Different people are different. It's something that most humans learn by early-adulthood, but the /. crowd is stuck in perpetual adolescence.
It's a small country, but it isn't THAT small.
> >10X lower than previous NASA
> Citation needed. And remember, the conversation is about TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATION not cost cutting.
Lots of cites out there for cost per pound. I'd dig one up for you but what's the point? you've shifted the goalposts with your assertion that "no TRUE innovation is based on cost cutting".
The personal computer was also mostly about cost-cutting, I guess that wasn't an innovation.
> American scientists discovered that the mixture was especially effective, when previously there was no such knowledge.
Was especially effective at what? Decreasing cost per pound? I thought we weren't talking about cost. Cost is irrelevant, remember the rules you just invented like three sentences ago?
Why not just do 10X more launches using the previous best booster fuel? Cost is irrelevant, right?
> If Musk found a new fuel mixture that offered significantly improved thrust, specific impulse or cost-effectiveness, I would be the first to give him credit.
Oh, cost-effectiveness is once again a permitted form of innnovation?
I don't believe you, nobody who is watching believes you, and deep down...you don't believe you, either.
And ultimately it doesn't matter--because I don't care if you think I'm a fanboi and you don't care if you're wrong.
SpaceX has a very low cost per kg into space. Lower than all the alternatives for many types of missions. >10X lower than previous NASA, and quite a bit lower than rockets from Russia. Probably not much lower than the hypothetical strawman you've offered of a non-bureaucratic rocket.
Landing rockets allows them to be re-used, which will cut the cost further. They've clearly mastered landing the rockets, next step is to recondition and reuse them--that will certainly result in lowered cost. It hasn't been reflected in that cost yet because we're talking about a new technology here.
> American scientists' discovery and refinement of aluminum-based solid rocket booster fuels.
You literally picked the easiest possible invention to debunk. Did they invent aluminum? Nope. Did they invent rockets? Nope. How about solid fuel rockets? Nope. Were they the first ones to notice that Aluminum has a high energy density? Nope.
Let's be completely fucking honest here. If Aluminum didn't exist as a solid booster fuel and then Elon Musk tweeted about it, you would be among those lining up with pitchforks claiming that he's a sleazy snake-oil salesmen taking credit for other peoples' inventions.
You don't like Elon Musk, and you absolutely hate any sniff of "tech hero worship". That's all that's happening here. You aren't that complicated. You are, however, boring.
> SpaceX has not, to my knowledge, come up with revolutionary new technologies.
Well, they cut the cost of a launch by a factor of 10, and they've landed rockets. I guess that doesn't qualify. And Tesla is releasing Model 3 at $35K, so your "toys for rich people" comment is stupid. Starting with the high-end is a perfectly reasonable strategy.
The real problems here are that:
(a) you don't understand what technology is. I mean that sincerely. You have no fucking clue. Let's try a thought experiment, name a single thing that you consider a "new technology". A single thing, from the entire history of mankind. I'll break that down into pieces and show how it was a very minor step from some previous thing. You'll then have a bit of a meltdown because by your definition there has never been a "new technology"--and I will have proven [by contradiction] that your definition of "technology" is wrong.
(b) You don't care about being wrong. You care only about shitting on people you don't like. You have an inexhaustible supply of excuses and the truth doesn't matter to you.
1. SpaceX is pretty important. Tesla is pretty important. The gigafactory is a big deal. SolarCity is a good idea. Elon Musk has been involved with several pretty important things. People take Elon Musk seriously because he is, frankly, a pretty fucking serious guy. Your petty psychological need to reject anything that smells of hero-worship is way more disturbing than any actual instances of hero worship. There is absolutely nothing absurd about calling someone a tech visionary when they are clearly a tech visionary--doesn't mean that everything he proposes is going to work out, because obviously that is a stupid standard.
2. The fact that people have been "thinking about vacuum tubes for a hundred years" is irrelevant. Just as irrelevant of all the criticism about Apple because...blah blah blah Xerox had a demo of a tablet in 1968. Invention is the combination of existing technologies to make a new, useful technology. Every invention is arguably a short step from previous inventions.
3. You say the hyperloop is silly because of track costs. The Musk proposal talks about this--it estimates costs based on large above-ground oil pipelines, very similar in materials, air tightness, and various stresses--the numbers work out for several hundreds of miles.
I guess that'll make Trump's border wall a lot easier to build.
You can install software from anywhere on a Mac.
People in the Apple ecosystem are perfectly aware of products from outside the ecosystem--we don't like them. If you like them, then go buy them.
People there watch way too much soccer. There are fistfights in stadiums and public drunkeness. It's a distraction for their workforce. I don't personally enjoy soccer, and America seems to get along without it [for the most part], therefore I can't understand why different countries (with different cultural and historic factors) need it.
Also, why so much tea? get rid of that, too.
1. nobody has killed you and taken your stuff
2. your savings [denominated in dollars] isn't subject to rampant inflation
3. your job exists because of a large, diverse, functional economy
4. no other country has invaded ours and destroyed our economy
If you think #1-#4 are easy, then please point me to the other country which manages all of these at lower taxes.
I think a lot of companies would love to fail that well.
I don't understand the argument that "thin phones are stupid because people are just going to put a case on it". It's still going to end up thinner than a thick phone with a case, right?
Do you think people put cases on their phones specifically to make them thicker? Maybe some, but most people use cases to protect their phone from scuffs, scratches, and cracks--all of which still apply to a thicker phone.
And now there are *slightly* fewer.
Build in a battery on a slim phone that covers the typical user, and then allow people to purchase a case that makes their phone thicker with a larger battery.
Or you can make your own--those are your choices with pretty much every single product in the world.