I think that this whole tariff circus misunderstands the economic relationship between the US and China. US corporations have exported much of their manufacturing to China, which offers poorer working conditions, more human rights violations, a sufficiently skilled workforce, and good transport infrastructure. These conditions help to drive down the cost of manufacturing and ensure a robust and reliable supply chain for the US market.
This arrangement is of enormous benefit and profit to US corporations. Unfortunately, while the cost of production has gone down, so has the income of most US households, pushed down by higher rates of unemployment, in real terms, decreased salaries, and degraded jobs (e.g. more service jobs). In other words, trade between the US and China makes the rich richer and the poor poorer in both countries.
Tariffs don't do anything to address these issues because it's trivial to get around tariffs, e.g. the Chinese can use intermediaries to get their goods into the US.
What's the difference between our computers being controlled by some fictionally competent AI vs. our computers being controlled by Microsoft, Apple, and Google? They're all immortal (corporations are people, remember?), not democratically accountable, and don't give a sh#t about you and me. The only difference I can see is that corporations have governments bending over backwards to ensure their success. In this respect, AI would at least meet some significant resistance.
This practically exactly what Pres. Obama and Sec.Clinton said in their campaigns.
Yes, empty promises. The Democrats track record since the 1980s (with Bill Clinton) has been one of serving and protecting Wall St. executives at the expense of everyone else.
it's REALLY hard to retrain people into new fields like you suggest. Bordering on impossible.
No, it isn't hard to train people who are already proficient at engineering jobs to do other engineering jobs. However, effecting and efficient training doesn't come cheap (I work in education and training and so read the current literature on these subjects). But then it's less expensive than the lost tax revenue from all those workers either not working or doing low-paid, unskilled labour. One of the problems with US post-secondary education and training is that they've been forced to do more with less for so long that many programmes are producing graduates who aren't much use to anyone.
If the clean power "investments" are beneficial to companies, and consumers, and are profitable, as Apple claims, then everyone involved from end to end *would already be choosing to do them, absent regulation*.
Yes, they are, and yes, they are. Investment capital is leaving fossil fuels in general and heading straight for wind and solar.
But then, Apple's press announcement is all politics to please their middle-class customer base, where rational thinking and reasoning don't belong. Since WWII politics has belonged to the PR & marketing industry, where emotion, indignation, and knee-jerk reaction reign supreme. Apple just want to be associated with popular ideas and movements so that they can sell more products. The way they run their own company is more of an indicator of where their values truly lie.
That would make one hell of a lot of coal miners.. I had no idea that many even existed, let alone were out of work. Or is this one of your made up comments
Not the original poster but I decided to check this out.
20 of the 25 states that produce coal in the US voted for Trump. That makes up 195 of the 306 electoral votes that he got (64% of them).
Now you can't simply say that the only reason these states went Trump was because of coal, but Pennsylvania for example, previously went Democrat. They are the #4 top coal producing state in the country (as of 2014) and have 20 electoral votes.
Was coal half the reason Trump got elected? Maybe not. Was it a large part? Possibly.
This shows how poorly the electorate and their representatives understand the US economy and job markets. Coal mining has been shedding jobs due to new methods of mining, e.g. mountain-top removal, ever bigger mining machines that require fewer operators, and increasing automation. Even if the US went crazy on coal and started building new coal power plants, it still wouldn't create many jobs. Those coal jobs are gone for good and they're not coming back. Ex-coal miners need new opportunities to find new jobs. How about retraining to work in the solar/wind power industry?
no, only kidding. I had to look up who CenturyLink are - a US internet/telecoms service provider. How did the US telecoms industry evolve into the embodiment of most of the points on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist?
AI is really good at playing computer games. So if AI has the same skills set that cybersecurity workers have, their jobs are soon to be automated out of existence.
ICT use, as currently practised in primary and secondary education, shows no evidence of academic benefit to students or teachers, while also showing an inverse correlation with decreased academic performance (OECD, 2015). iPads/tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc., in schools are more of a problem than a benefit. Why are taxpayers giving all this money and wasting all their children's and young adults' time with this nonsense?
Yes, there is a specific argument for school pupils to learn to use office software and to search databases for post-secondary studying and work. That's not the same thing as current ICT practices in schools.
Reference: OECD (2015) Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection, Paris, OECD Publishing [Online]. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789... (Accessed 15 September 2015).
We often read articles that scream in moral outrage about the great firewall of China and how the Chinese govt. monitors and filters everything that people do online. How is this any different in principle if all the US big tech companies do it?
The causes of antibiotic resistance are interesting. Including insufficient treatment of wastewater of both human effluent and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. At least these look like solvable problems that can help, as well as banning antibiotic use in animal feed and tightening pharmaceutical retail practices in some countries.
Governments also need to step up their involvement in pharmaceutical research and development of antibiotics because the pharma companies aren't interested in doing it. You know, governments' responsibility to protect their citizens from harm?
I'm thinking about how this played out over the phone after the DHS discovered the devices:
DHS: Hello, this is special agent Norman Normal from DHS counter-espionage.
CIA: Hi there Norm, how can we help you?
DHS: Well, here's the thing. We've found some fake cell towers in Washington D.C. and were wondering if you guys know anything about them. Do you?
CIA: Sorry Norm. We can neither confirm nor deny any knowledge of any such devices on US soil. You know that it would be unconstitutional of us to interfere in domestic intelligence matters.
[long uncomfortable silence while the penny drops]
Yes, there is an additional argument that news agencies nowadays are chasing reduced revenue because of the web. Headlines are being carefully crafted to attract clicks and the more sensational the headline the more clicks they're likely to get. It also shapes what news is reported and how. But at least professional journalists and their publishers can be held to account for publishing stuff that's not true. Journalists' credibility often rests on the principle of accountability, although we could also argue that standards in things like fact-checking and depth of coverage are slipping.
But, in the cases of Facebook, and social media in general, the discourse is handed over to poorly informed individuals with no journalistic background or training. Some are deliberate trolls while others may just unconsciously pick up on the tone of discourse, norms, values, etc. that are implicit in inflammatory rhetoric and fall into those ways of interacting with others online (aligning ourselves with each other is a natural, instinctive, thing we do). People can remain (more or less) anonymous and avoid accountability for what they say and/or how they treat others online. I think it's a special kind of problem, unique to social media.
This is a common problem in a number of fields. The usual answer is to turn the calculation around and start with the purpose/function/use-case scenario of the item. In this case, it'd be to sort the list of available items, optimal to sub-optimal, according to performance at compressing video, playing a particular type of game, or whatever. Shoppers can then find the categories that they're interested in.
May argument is not that Facebook have failed to block intolerance. It's that they are modulators of intolerance. Their business model is predicated on inserting itself into sensitive issues and making things worse. That's what drives user "engagement" and therefore Facebook's advertising revenue. There is no realistic incentive for Facebook to do anything to reduce or prevent intolerance.
...is to encourage behaviour from its users that is as divisive as possible. Or what Facebook calls "engagement.' Inciting indignant outrage and creating conflict between users and groups of users keeps them on the platform so that they see more adverts and so the money rolls into Facebook's coffers. Facebook's business model is the opposite of the Silicon Valley mantra "Making the world a better place."
The famous philosopher of science who gave us the modern scientific method, Karl Popper, had a great insight into intolerance, i.e. that we should be intolerant of intolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I think we can arguably view Facebook's business model as just one gigantic "meta-troll" that cultivates troll-like behaviour in its users (Not everyone becomes a troll but everyone is exposed to extreme, divisive troll-like episodes).
If we want to have more constructive public discourse in areas of conflict, it's probably better to ban Facebook in them. And if we want to make the world a better place, how about banning Facebook altogether. Let's be intolerant of a platform that breeds intolerance.
HAL: You used some naughty words in a document you're writing in the cloud. The document has been restricted and you won't be able to continue writing it until you've removed all the naughty words.
More like your purse-lipped mother-in-law interfering in everything you do than anything else.
...surveillance creep creeps towards more creepiness. Are Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft to become our thought police? You know, now that they're censoring our documents on the cloud. What will they make of ideologically deviant utterances made by us proles? Will irony and sarcasm be effectively suppressed and censored? (Machines aren't very good at interpreting intent so things like irony and sarcasm are mostly imperceptible to them).
The Open University (large distance Ed. uni in the UK) recently shifted all its student and faculty accounts from Google Docs to MS Office. I'm assuming that most faculty don't want to learn to use anything other than MS Office and whichever domain specific software they use, e.g. SPSS, InVivo, and/or R. Google Docs is probably too much of a change in UI/UX for them to tolerate so it makes sense to stay with MS Office and use essentially the same thing online and stop buying/renewing MS Office licences for however many thousands of desktop and laptop PCs/Macs they're using. I wonder how many other large organisations/institutions are switching?
I'm a (Linux) Grsync and LibreOffice user so none of this affects me. Restoring backups from a USB3 HDD is easier and faster than cloud backup. Also bear in mind that it's wise to keep local backups in case you somehow lose access to your cloud account or your provider decides to change the fees and/or rules against your interests. Makes cloud backups/storage look a bit expensive and redundant in this light.
Slashdot Mirror
I think that this whole tariff circus misunderstands the economic relationship between the US and China. US corporations have exported much of their manufacturing to China, which offers poorer working conditions, more human rights violations, a sufficiently skilled workforce, and good transport infrastructure. These conditions help to drive down the cost of manufacturing and ensure a robust and reliable supply chain for the US market.
This arrangement is of enormous benefit and profit to US corporations. Unfortunately, while the cost of production has gone down, so has the income of most US households, pushed down by higher rates of unemployment, in real terms, decreased salaries, and degraded jobs (e.g. more service jobs). In other words, trade between the US and China makes the rich richer and the poor poorer in both countries.
Tariffs don't do anything to address these issues because it's trivial to get around tariffs, e.g. the Chinese can use intermediaries to get their goods into the US.
Apple spend more than $1 billion a year on advertising. I wonder how much of that goes on creepy ads that follow you around on the internet?
What's the difference between our computers being controlled by some fictionally competent AI vs. our computers being controlled by Microsoft, Apple, and Google? They're all immortal (corporations are people, remember?), not democratically accountable, and don't give a sh#t about you and me. The only difference I can see is that corporations have governments bending over backwards to ensure their success. In this respect, AI would at least meet some significant resistance.
This practically exactly what Pres. Obama and Sec.Clinton said in their campaigns.
Yes, empty promises. The Democrats track record since the 1980s (with Bill Clinton) has been one of serving and protecting Wall St. executives at the expense of everyone else.
it's REALLY hard to retrain people into new fields like you suggest. Bordering on impossible.
No, it isn't hard to train people who are already proficient at engineering jobs to do other engineering jobs. However, effecting and efficient training doesn't come cheap (I work in education and training and so read the current literature on these subjects). But then it's less expensive than the lost tax revenue from all those workers either not working or doing low-paid, unskilled labour. One of the problems with US post-secondary education and training is that they've been forced to do more with less for so long that many programmes are producing graduates who aren't much use to anyone.
If the clean power "investments" are beneficial to companies, and consumers, and are profitable, as Apple claims, then everyone involved from end to end *would already be choosing to do them, absent regulation*.
Yes, they are, and yes, they are. Investment capital is leaving fossil fuels in general and heading straight for wind and solar.
But then, Apple's press announcement is all politics to please their middle-class customer base, where rational thinking and reasoning don't belong. Since WWII politics has belonged to the PR & marketing industry, where emotion, indignation, and knee-jerk reaction reign supreme. Apple just want to be associated with popular ideas and movements so that they can sell more products. The way they run their own company is more of an indicator of where their values truly lie.
That would make one hell of a lot of coal miners.. I had no idea that many even existed, let alone were out of work. Or is this one of your made up comments
Not the original poster but I decided to check this out.
20 of the 25 states that produce coal in the US voted for Trump. That makes up 195 of the 306 electoral votes that he got (64% of them).
Now you can't simply say that the only reason these states went Trump was because of coal, but Pennsylvania for example, previously went Democrat. They are the #4 top coal producing state in the country (as of 2014) and have 20 electoral votes.
Was coal half the reason Trump got elected? Maybe not. Was it a large part? Possibly.
This shows how poorly the electorate and their representatives understand the US economy and job markets. Coal mining has been shedding jobs due to new methods of mining, e.g. mountain-top removal, ever bigger mining machines that require fewer operators, and increasing automation. Even if the US went crazy on coal and started building new coal power plants, it still wouldn't create many jobs. Those coal jobs are gone for good and they're not coming back. Ex-coal miners need new opportunities to find new jobs. How about retraining to work in the solar/wind power industry?
Doesn't that make everything we do sound just so... pointless?
Boring! Now, what's next. You know, like, whatever.
You've just given me an idea! >:D
no, only kidding. I had to look up who CenturyLink are - a US internet/telecoms service provider. How did the US telecoms industry evolve into the embodiment of most of the points on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist?
AI is really good at playing computer games. So if AI has the same skills set that cybersecurity workers have, their jobs are soon to be automated out of existence.
Yes, it'd make sense for countries to pool their resources and knowledge too. Some umbrella organisation like the WHO could coordinate efforts.
ICT use, as currently practised in primary and secondary education, shows no evidence of academic benefit to students or teachers, while also showing an inverse correlation with decreased academic performance (OECD, 2015). iPads/tablets, laptops, smartphones, etc., in schools are more of a problem than a benefit. Why are taxpayers giving all this money and wasting all their children's and young adults' time with this nonsense?
Yes, there is a specific argument for school pupils to learn to use office software and to search databases for post-secondary studying and work. That's not the same thing as current ICT practices in schools.
Reference: OECD (2015) Students, Computers and Learning: Making The Connection, Paris, OECD Publishing [Online]. Available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1787/9789... (Accessed 15 September 2015).
We often read articles that scream in moral outrage about the great firewall of China and how the Chinese govt. monitors and filters everything that people do online. How is this any different in principle if all the US big tech companies do it?
The causes of antibiotic resistance are interesting. Including insufficient treatment of wastewater of both human effluent and pharmaceutical manufacturing processes. At least these look like solvable problems that can help, as well as banning antibiotic use in animal feed and tightening pharmaceutical retail practices in some countries.
Governments also need to step up their involvement in pharmaceutical research and development of antibiotics because the pharma companies aren't interested in doing it. You know, governments' responsibility to protect their citizens from harm?
Facebook also stores posts that you write but don't post. It's difficult to explain capturing text as it's typed as a bug.
St. Ignutius often sounds radical at first but then turns out to be entirely right in the long-run. Irreplaceable.
I'm thinking about how this played out over the phone after the DHS discovered the devices:
Yes, there is an additional argument that news agencies nowadays are chasing reduced revenue because of the web. Headlines are being carefully crafted to attract clicks and the more sensational the headline the more clicks they're likely to get. It also shapes what news is reported and how. But at least professional journalists and their publishers can be held to account for publishing stuff that's not true. Journalists' credibility often rests on the principle of accountability, although we could also argue that standards in things like fact-checking and depth of coverage are slipping.
But, in the cases of Facebook, and social media in general, the discourse is handed over to poorly informed individuals with no journalistic background or training. Some are deliberate trolls while others may just unconsciously pick up on the tone of discourse, norms, values, etc. that are implicit in inflammatory rhetoric and fall into those ways of interacting with others online (aligning ourselves with each other is a natural, instinctive, thing we do). People can remain (more or less) anonymous and avoid accountability for what they say and/or how they treat others online. I think it's a special kind of problem, unique to social media.
This is a common problem in a number of fields. The usual answer is to turn the calculation around and start with the purpose/function/use-case scenario of the item. In this case, it'd be to sort the list of available items, optimal to sub-optimal, according to performance at compressing video, playing a particular type of game, or whatever. Shoppers can then find the categories that they're interested in.
Number one rule of the web: Don't disclose sensitive personal information to startups or apps.
Number two rule of the web: Don't disclose sensitive personal information to startups or apps.
Number three rule of the web: DON'T DISCLOSE SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFORMATION TO STARTUPS OR APPS!
etc..
May argument is not that Facebook have failed to block intolerance. It's that they are modulators of intolerance. Their business model is predicated on inserting itself into sensitive issues and making things worse. That's what drives user "engagement" and therefore Facebook's advertising revenue. There is no realistic incentive for Facebook to do anything to reduce or prevent intolerance.
...is to encourage behaviour from its users that is as divisive as possible. Or what Facebook calls "engagement.' Inciting indignant outrage and creating conflict between users and groups of users keeps them on the platform so that they see more adverts and so the money rolls into Facebook's coffers. Facebook's business model is the opposite of the Silicon Valley mantra "Making the world a better place."
The famous philosopher of science who gave us the modern scientific method, Karl Popper, had a great insight into intolerance, i.e. that we should be intolerant of intolerance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... I think we can arguably view Facebook's business model as just one gigantic "meta-troll" that cultivates troll-like behaviour in its users (Not everyone becomes a troll but everyone is exposed to extreme, divisive troll-like episodes).
If we want to have more constructive public discourse in areas of conflict, it's probably better to ban Facebook in them. And if we want to make the world a better place, how about banning Facebook altogether. Let's be intolerant of a platform that breeds intolerance.
More like:
More like your purse-lipped mother-in-law interfering in everything you do than anything else.
...surveillance creep creeps towards more creepiness. Are Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft to become our thought police? You know, now that they're censoring our documents on the cloud. What will they make of ideologically deviant utterances made by us proles? Will irony and sarcasm be effectively suppressed and censored? (Machines aren't very good at interpreting intent so things like irony and sarcasm are mostly imperceptible to them).
The Open University (large distance Ed. uni in the UK) recently shifted all its student and faculty accounts from Google Docs to MS Office. I'm assuming that most faculty don't want to learn to use anything other than MS Office and whichever domain specific software they use, e.g. SPSS, InVivo, and/or R. Google Docs is probably too much of a change in UI/UX for them to tolerate so it makes sense to stay with MS Office and use essentially the same thing online and stop buying/renewing MS Office licences for however many thousands of desktop and laptop PCs/Macs they're using. I wonder how many other large organisations/institutions are switching?
I'm a (Linux) Grsync and LibreOffice user so none of this affects me. Restoring backups from a USB3 HDD is easier and faster than cloud backup. Also bear in mind that it's wise to keep local backups in case you somehow lose access to your cloud account or your provider decides to change the fees and/or rules against your interests. Makes cloud backups/storage look a bit expensive and redundant in this light.
Yay, M$ Coin ICO coming soon!?