"The way of the future is not mass-transit at all, but individual transportation."
If people get used to being ferried around individually in autonomous cars, paying per ride, wouldn't they be MORE likely to accept multi-person vehicles into the mix for commuting and other situations where this would be more efficient?
Currently the thinking is, "I'm a driver. I'll vote for mass transit only when I think it will take some of the traffic off the roads I drive. I'm different from them down there in the tube." Autonomous cars that make us all into transit riders will change the whole psychology.
A large part of the bus perception problem is the slow, smoky, lumbering diesels. A hybrid design with fully regenerative braking could accelerate and stop a lot faster, because there would no longer be such a fuel penalty for zippier operation.
Silicon Valley's recent host of me-too social media apps promoted by startups that end in 'ly' are due for immolation, but if you're working on one of the large scale development efforts that have a good chance of transforming society in as basic a way as the smartphone has, you don't have to worry about your job. An example: autonomous cars.
"And yet....we can't seem to track down and prosecute those scumbags who try to scam old people and other tech novices on the Internet."
In fact, if the feds are unable to track down ransomware scammers, I submit that the whole surveillance problem is a mirage. If surveillance tech had the super-powers everyone imagines they have, that would be both a simple problem, and would be a way of making the public feel better about surveillance.
Any technology change that requires this massive a replacement of existing infrastructure, distribution networks and businesses will take place slowly enough so that no social upheaval need occur. Not only will it will take a generation, like the post-WW II replacement of urban living by suburbs, but the process itself will create a fountain of new jobs.
One consequence will be that parking lots will disappear. Like the site of the Berlin Wall after German reunification, disused urban parking lots will become the new urban real estate gold rush. Businesses will expand into them, new housing will be built on them, pocket parks will be developed.
When the autonomous car market really gets going, it will lower the cost of ridesharing to the extent that it will spread into the suburbs and the countryside. Outlying retirement communities would be a diamond mine for such a service. Once established in places where people have been used to owning cars, knocking off medallion cab monopolies in the last few "blue cities" will be a natural conclusion.
This argument has been suggested, but it presupposes an expansion of eminent domain to human labor. This has not happened yet, even with the current SCOTUS.
"We do. It's the amendment two over [wikipedia.org] from the right to bear arms"
In addition, forcing Apple to do work for the government against its will is a Thirteenth Amendment violation. We haven't had one of those for some time.
Another lifelong Republican here, and what I'm hoping is that in burning down the old house we will get some new parties out of this. Can we hope for a Science And Technology Party being one of them?
Those Oregon ranchers had an old set of grievances against the BLM (the federal land agency, not the newfangled Chicago thugs) but totally failed to educate the public about what they were fighting for. Once the media was able to portray them as a bunch of old coots holed up in a bird sanctuary, they had lost all hope of gathering popular support.
But bullying a major, cultishly popular Silicon Valley company is another matter entirely. All of the tech sector except for Apple's failing rival has lined up against the DOJ, and are ready to make monkeys of the FBI in online media - and we have a general election coming up. Popcorn!
In urban contexts the sight of autonomous bicycles stopping at signals, not blasting through crowds of pedestrians, and not darting through traffic from unexpected directions is going to feel downright weird, especially if they are being used for courier deliveries. We're going to have to program in some Bay Area behavior so they blend in more. It would be like having a "BMW mode" on your autonomous car.
As alternatives to atomic clocks, sundials would probably be best for daylight hours. At night and for cloudy days, I would suggest a wind-powered clock, which would provide perfectly accurate results twice a day. For Germans, I suggest a coal-fired clock, which though more carbon intensive, would get you up in the morning in time to drive your Bagger 228 through still another village.
"Here is this cryptocurrency, I just invented, and me and my friends printed ourselves thousands or millions of the finite number of coins before you even heard about it. You should all use it! Then our coins will be worth something and we get super rich off it."
This single problem blows away the whole selling point of cryptocurrency, which is that the money supply is limited by mathematics rather than than being having to be monitored in real time by a central bank. It's as though the lucky insiders keep issuing themselves infinite do-overs, while the rest of us have to keep jumping to figure out which crypocurrency to use next.
IMHO, we would be better off attacking the blockchain scaling problem and the wallet theft problem by using these concepts on a conventional currency. Setting up a crypotocurrency is a related but separate technology.
"I would not feel safe leaving my computer with a "technician" who accidentally breaks shit while they are trying to do a routine part replacement."
Yes, when something goes wrong with your Made In Chechnya laptop you can totally bring it to a Microsoft Store, have the CPU fan and battery replaced, and if the tech breaks something else in the process he will admit it and fix it for free.
This article is a Canadian perspective, but it's instructive to see how others see us. The whole point of TPP seems to be to ratify US corporate monopolies that have up to now only been enforced within the US. If TPP is ratified, all of the signatory countries get US-style intellectual property oppression, US-style high pharma prices, and a surveillance state to replaces Internet freedom.
It's an old market manipulation technique: give your product away to increase market share, and then cash in when you drive as many competitors as possible out of the market. It takes time to smelt metals, build assembly lines and crank up production.
But this doesn't work so well with services, especially those with little capital investment. A ridesharing service doesn't even have to build fast food stands.
Slashdot Mirror
"The way of the future is not mass-transit at all, but individual transportation."
If people get used to being ferried around individually in autonomous cars, paying per ride, wouldn't they be MORE likely to accept multi-person vehicles into the mix for commuting and other situations where this would be more efficient?
Currently the thinking is, "I'm a driver. I'll vote for mass transit only when I think it will take some of the traffic off the roads I drive. I'm different from them down there in the tube." Autonomous cars that make us all into transit riders will change the whole psychology.
A large part of the bus perception problem is the slow, smoky, lumbering diesels. A hybrid design with fully regenerative braking could accelerate and stop a lot faster, because there would no longer be such a fuel penalty for zippier operation.
I'm wondering: is this a real doxing, or an intentional feed from the campaign?
All downtown BART stations have to be periodically taken offline so that human excrement can be cleaned out of the escalators.
"I can't get an exemption to the speed limit, so that makes it okay for me to speed? "
I have a physicist friend who can do that. "Officer, if I knew how fast I was going, then I wouldn't know where I was, now would I?"
Silicon Valley's recent host of me-too social media apps promoted by startups that end in 'ly' are due for immolation, but if you're working on one of the large scale development efforts that have a good chance of transforming society in as basic a way as the smartphone has, you don't have to worry about your job. An example: autonomous cars.
"And yet....we can't seem to track down and prosecute those scumbags who try to scam old people and other tech novices on the Internet."
In fact, if the feds are unable to track down ransomware scammers, I submit that the whole surveillance problem is a mirage. If surveillance tech had the super-powers everyone imagines they have, that would be both a simple problem, and would be a way of making the public feel better about surveillance.
"Were you asked for your email address or phone number when paying cash recently?"
Some retailer is going to buy the dead husk of Radio Shack just so they can do that.
Any technology change that requires this massive a replacement of existing infrastructure, distribution networks and businesses will take place slowly enough so that no social upheaval need occur. Not only will it will take a generation, like the post-WW II replacement of urban living by suburbs, but the process itself will create a fountain of new jobs.
One consequence will be that parking lots will disappear. Like the site of the Berlin Wall after German reunification, disused urban parking lots will become the new urban real estate gold rush. Businesses will expand into them, new housing will be built on them, pocket parks will be developed.
When the autonomous car market really gets going, it will lower the cost of ridesharing to the extent that it will spread into the suburbs and the countryside. Outlying retirement communities would be a diamond mine for such a service. Once established in places where people have been used to owning cars, knocking off medallion cab monopolies in the last few "blue cities" will be a natural conclusion.
"Wouldn't it be faster if they just outlawed business, innovation, science and technology, religion, commerce and probably fire too? "
If this election year results in a multiparty system, that will be the Greens' job.
This argument has been suggested, but it presupposes an expansion of eminent domain to human labor. This has not happened yet, even with the current SCOTUS.
"We do. It's the amendment two over [wikipedia.org] from the right to bear arms"
In addition, forcing Apple to do work for the government against its will is a Thirteenth Amendment violation. We haven't had one of those for some time.
Another lifelong Republican here, and what I'm hoping is that in burning down the old house we will get some new parties out of this. Can we hope for a Science And Technology Party being one of them?
Those Oregon ranchers had an old set of grievances against the BLM (the federal land agency, not the newfangled Chicago thugs) but totally failed to educate the public about what they were fighting for. Once the media was able to portray them as a bunch of old coots holed up in a bird sanctuary, they had lost all hope of gathering popular support.
But bullying a major, cultishly popular Silicon Valley company is another matter entirely. All of the tech sector except for Apple's failing rival has lined up against the DOJ, and are ready to make monkeys of the FBI in online media - and we have a general election coming up. Popcorn!
In urban contexts the sight of autonomous bicycles stopping at signals, not blasting through crowds of pedestrians, and not darting through traffic from unexpected directions is going to feel downright weird, especially if they are being used for courier deliveries. We're going to have to program in some Bay Area behavior so they blend in more. It would be like having a "BMW mode" on your autonomous car.
" Why aren't these countries also saying 'we will not allow people who say these things to enter our country' "
And while they're at it, could they possibly pull their own people back from Europe, the Americas and Asia, and never be seen outside al-Ummah again?
We can dream, can't we?
"to have a third party with foreign membership fucking with our elections is a direct attack on our democratic ideals (flawed though they may be)."
And guess which candidate will be able to use that very point as another platform plank? To be laid right next to the Chicago thug plank.
Because all of his documents are on scrolls of tree bark.
As alternatives to atomic clocks, sundials would probably be best for daylight hours. At night and for cloudy days, I would suggest a wind-powered clock, which would provide perfectly accurate results twice a day. For Germans, I suggest a coal-fired clock, which though more carbon intensive, would get you up in the morning in time to drive your Bagger 228 through still another village.
"Here is this cryptocurrency, I just invented, and me and my friends printed ourselves thousands or millions of the finite number of coins before you even heard about it. You should all use it! Then our coins will be worth something and we get super rich off it."
This single problem blows away the whole selling point of cryptocurrency, which is that the money supply is limited by mathematics rather than than being having to be monitored in real time by a central bank. It's as though the lucky insiders keep issuing themselves infinite do-overs, while the rest of us have to keep jumping to figure out which crypocurrency to use next.
IMHO, we would be better off attacking the blockchain scaling problem and the wallet theft problem by using these concepts on a conventional currency. Setting up a crypotocurrency is a related but separate technology.
"I would not feel safe leaving my computer with a "technician" who accidentally breaks shit while they are trying to do a routine part replacement."
Yes, when something goes wrong with your Made In Chechnya laptop you can totally bring it to a Microsoft Store, have the CPU fan and battery replaced, and if the tech breaks something else in the process he will admit it and fix it for free.
This article is a Canadian perspective, but it's instructive to see how others see us. The whole point of TPP seems to be to ratify US corporate monopolies that have up to now only been enforced within the US. If TPP is ratified, all of the signatory countries get US-style intellectual property oppression, US-style high pharma prices, and a surveillance state to replaces Internet freedom.
It's an old market manipulation technique: give your product away to increase market share, and then cash in when you drive as many competitors as possible out of the market. It takes time to smelt metals, build assembly lines and crank up production.
But this doesn't work so well with services, especially those with little capital investment. A ridesharing service doesn't even have to build fast food stands.
Well said!