The next big hit will be the trucking industry. Everyone thinks Google's self driving cars are pretty cute, right? Fewer accidents, vision impaired people can get to the grocery store, your car can drive your drunk ass home from the bar safely? All good, right?
Two things about that. First thing, they want this for the trucking industry. Don't tell me they're not working on it because they absolutely are. First article, second article.
The USA is set to lose 3.5 million jobs, just as soon as we get this tech ironed out. And it doesn't matter who the president is. Trump, Hillary, Vermin Supreme - it'll happen no matter what. It has nothing to do with politics, NAFTA, any of it. It's progress, it's capitalism, and it's going to happen.
People need to look a little farther afield than simple manufacturing to see how automation will affect the economy.
AT&T To Cough Up $88 Million For 'Cramming' Mobile Customer Bills
And this:
Through the FTC's refund program, nearly 2.5 million current ATT customers will receive a credit on their bill within the next 75 days, and more than 300,000 former customers will receive a check.
So, $88000000/(2500000+300000) = $31.43. Thanks guys, I'll try not to spend it all in one place.
I actually pity you, that you imagine that a mere politician has the power to restrain progress for any great length of time.
This is exactly the case, 100%. Trump sold a bill of goods saying he'll bring jobs back and people bought it. There's actually a really great article over at Cracked about Trump's popularity. The TL;DR summary is that "Make America Great Again" means "bring back the manufacturing jobs", not necessarily "let's have racism again". At least that's the theory, anyways.
But those jobs are gone and not coming back, no matter what Trump does. Or if Hillary or Bernie or Stein or Vermin Supreme or anyone else who happened to win would be able to do. Progress isn't partisan and doesn't care who the President is.
Trump's "clean coal" bit? Even if Congress rubber stamps everything he proposes, the coal industry is still doomed, jobs wise. The coal industry is set to drop half its workforce through automation over the next 10 years. That's not theoretical either. The tech is already there. Coal industry will drop 300,000 jobs at least over the next decade, and nothing can stop it. If some crazy "mandatory-buggy-whip-for-each-automobile" type law gets passed here mandating mines can't use robots - still doomed. All that would do is drive up the price of our coal as the rest of the world digs it up cheaper and cheaper.
Best thing we can do is accept it and move on. And plan for it. You're right - people should be *far* more worried about robots than the Chinese. Nobody is talking about how the coal industry is set to drop those 300,000 jobs. Everyone in the rural areas are all aglow with Trump getting elected. They're about to be sorely disappointed though when the robots take over those jobs. Don't think I'm bashing Trump there either - I'm not. Again, it'll happen no matter who the President is. It's just that with Trump he promised to fix things, and he can't. It'll be more bitter.
And the worst is yet to come. Nobody is talking about Google's self-driving car and what stands to happen when that gets perfected. We have 3,500,000 truck drivers employed in the USA. It's the most common profession today, truck driver. And pretty soon most of those people will be unemployed too. It absolutely will happen. What then?
We need to focus more on the future, what we know it will hold, and make our plans for it in the here-and-now.
Your concerns about tornadoes and cold weather and snow loading - these are things off the top of your head that you thought of within 5 minutes of skimming the article. I'm pretty certain the engineers - who spend their entire days working on this project - have thought of all of this.
That being said though, I'm with you. I would wait for a third party review as well. Let's get some objective pricing and usage data before we get too happy.
Um, do you not understand just about everything Trump did was equally staged? He knows how Television works.
Yes, exactly precisely this. The man has been in front of a TV camera for decades. He's a reality TV star. He knows how to make a false drama engaging. He's very good at it. It doesn't matter if anything he said was true or not, it was entertaining! Who cares if they don't do abortions in the 9th month? Who cares if we've only found about a few dozen actual cases of voter fraud? Play it up! Make it dramatic and absolutely nobody will care.
Yeah me too. I know of 3 Trump voters, and all were for Bernie originally. I know of 4 more Bernie-or-busters that voted third party. You have it exactly perfectly right.
And this fellow doesn't just do some hand waving. He has a theory, it is coherent, it is testable and falsifiable, and it also explains the galaxy rotation problem and the flyby anomaly accurately. As well as the EmDrive.
AT&T can determine where you are, and who you are talking to, and all sorts of super-spy stuff like that. But they can't figure out where robocalls are coming from and stop those? AT&T can find me, but they can't find fucking Rachel from Card Member Services?
Well if you really want to see a movie on its release date there are not many legal options.
First off, you're exactly right. If you want to see something the minute it's released, that's the only way to go.
So I'd like to offer another thought. What's so great about that?
Seriously. What's so great about having something the minute it's available? We put a lot of importance on that for some reason. The 2017 Chevys are out early, the latest Star Wars film was just released, Apple just made a phone that is 2% faster than their last one.
Why do we care?
Perhaps that's the thing we should be examining. The theater isn't a barrier to seeing a movie, they're a barrier to seeing a just released movie. That movie you want to see will be the exact same movie a week or a month or a year from now. And you have plenty of legal avenues (and far cheaper ones, and far more pleasant ones) than going to a theater.
Maybe the real problem is instant gratification, and our dependence on it.
You can cheat the citizens, but you can never cheat Uncle Sam. Doesn't matter if we get screwed, only if the government sees a loss. Then suddenly it becomes a priority.
"YTMP3 rapidly and seamlessly removes the audio tracks contained in videos streamed from YouTube that YTMP3's users access, converts those audio tracks to an MP3 format, copies and stores them on YTMP3's servers, and then distributes copies of the MP3 audio files from its servers to its users in the United States, enabling its users to download those MP3 files to their computers, tablets, or smartphones,"
So, because something can be used to commit a crime, that is sufficient reason to assume that it is?
Guns can be used to commit a crime too. A lot of crime involves a gun. But we don't ban those, right?
I'm all for safe nuclear. Pebble bed reactors for the win.
But when you say algae biodiesel isn't available today, I think we're discussing two different things. You're saying you can't buy it today, and that's true. I'm saying we have the technology to make it if we wanted, which is also true.
As for startup cost, yeah. That will happen. But remember the first transistor was about the size of a baseball and took Bell Labs years to make. Now look what we can do. It'll be the same with algae if we choose to do it. Read that paper I posted. We already have had trial ponds and the numbers that paper uses come from those trial runs. What I'm saying is that we don't have to wait for some breakthrough like we would need to make hydrogen viable. We have everything we need right now. Land, sun, water, algae, and petrochemical infrastructure. All the pieces are already in place, just waiting for the word "go".
If we wanted home grown diesel/gasoline, we could have it. We could stop pulling oil out of the ground and simply grow what we want. Easily and simply. By all means we should pursue nuclear and wind farms and the rest, but we should be doing this too.
Oh sure, it's not a sexy solution at all. I'd like to see a future with a Tesla in every garage and fusion plants dotting the landscape. And I do think we'll get there someday. But this approach does have the merit of being available today. It uses the petroleum infrastructure we already have in place, so no spin-up costs there. And it's 100% carbon neutral, which will become increasingly important in the next few decades.
Millions of years of evolution has already given us a pretty darn efficient solar energy battery in algae. Even in a future with wind farms everywhere or fusion or whatever, hydrocarbons are a hard to beat storage meduim in terms of energy density. A carbon neutral hydrocarbon solution would still have a place.
I take this article to be good news. Renewable energy is finally contributing to the grid well enough to where emissions will drop below the carbon emitted from transportation. This is excellent progress and excellent news.
It's my favorite paper on the topic and I'll take any opportunity to post it.
TL;DR - if we really wanted to, we (meaning the USA) could utilize biodiesel entirely for our current transportation needs. It would be 100% renewable, carbon neutral, and all the money spent would stay inside our own borders. And any other country could easily do the same. There is absolutely NO need to haul oil out of the ground anymore.
Check the math in the paper. We really could do this.
Again, I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'd just like the question to be explored a bit more.
Morally it's quite clear, you simply don't consume the content. Justifying theft because of (supposed) shady business practices is not remotely moral.
Well, what if you don't think of it as theft? What if the movie is an advertisement, and the actual product is the merchandise? That's basically how it is, at least from the point of view of the creators of the content.
Let's say you love Star Wars. A safe assumption. And you want to reward George Lucas for putting something in your life that you love. Which makes more sense to do:
A) Buy the latest remastered blu ray. It'll set you back maybe $15, and George will see maybe a nickle of that. Corrupt Hollywood middlemen will see the other $14.95. They didn't have jack to do with the movie, they have just paid lawyers and positioned themselves in the middle as a barrier that must be crossed to get to the stuff you love.
B) Pirate it online, then buy a Jar Jar Binks figure. It'll set you back maybe $5, but George will see a dollar of that, and the corrupt assholes in the middle get bupkis.
Again, I'm not saying what you should do. Pirating movies is illegal and can get you in some serious hot water. I'm just asking people to think about the actual dynamics of the situation.
So you have no ethical issues pirating content? Please no BS about sticking it to the media corporations--that is just rationalizing the fact you are just a cheap jerk with no morals.
It's theft if you download content and view it for free, sure, but you're not exactly morally in the clear if you do pay. Your money is lining the pockets of famously and spectacularly corrupt middle men, with only pennies on the dollar going to the artists you love.
The correct thing to do isn't as clear as you might suppose. Morally, it may be more correct to pirate their content then buy a t-shirt or something from them, because they'll see most of that money. Most notably George Lucas is wealthy because of merchandise, not movies.
I'm not saying what to do, what not to do, or what I do - I just want you to think about it a bit before tossing out moral absolutes.
And plenty other survivors and escapees. Imagine what it would take to plan an escape from North Korea, and actually carry it out. Soon-ok and Chol-hwan served time in labor camps where they saw executions and human experimentation, and still had the stones to manage an escape knowing what horrible fate failure would get them. If that doesn't merit the label of hero, I don't know what would.
Slashdot Mirror
The next big hit will be the trucking industry. Everyone thinks Google's self driving cars are pretty cute, right? Fewer accidents, vision impaired people can get to the grocery store, your car can drive your drunk ass home from the bar safely? All good, right?
Two things about that. First thing, they want this for the trucking industry. Don't tell me they're not working on it because they absolutely are. First article, second article.
Second thing. Truck driver is the most popular profession today. First article, second article.
The USA is set to lose 3.5 million jobs, just as soon as we get this tech ironed out. And it doesn't matter who the president is. Trump, Hillary, Vermin Supreme - it'll happen no matter what. It has nothing to do with politics, NAFTA, any of it. It's progress, it's capitalism, and it's going to happen.
People need to look a little farther afield than simple manufacturing to see how automation will affect the economy.
We have this:
AT&T To Cough Up $88 Million For 'Cramming' Mobile Customer Bills
And this:
Through the FTC's refund program, nearly 2.5 million current ATT customers will receive a credit on their bill within the next 75 days, and more than 300,000 former customers will receive a check.
So, $88000000/(2500000+300000) = $31.43. Thanks guys, I'll try not to spend it all in one place.
Because the planet we are on isn't a part of space.
I actually pity you, that you imagine that a mere politician has the power to restrain progress for any great length of time.
This is exactly the case, 100%. Trump sold a bill of goods saying he'll bring jobs back and people bought it. There's actually a really great article over at Cracked about Trump's popularity. The TL;DR summary is that "Make America Great Again" means "bring back the manufacturing jobs", not necessarily "let's have racism again". At least that's the theory, anyways.
But those jobs are gone and not coming back, no matter what Trump does. Or if Hillary or Bernie or Stein or Vermin Supreme or anyone else who happened to win would be able to do. Progress isn't partisan and doesn't care who the President is.
Trump's "clean coal" bit? Even if Congress rubber stamps everything he proposes, the coal industry is still doomed, jobs wise. The coal industry is set to drop half its workforce through automation over the next 10 years. That's not theoretical either. The tech is already there. Coal industry will drop 300,000 jobs at least over the next decade, and nothing can stop it. If some crazy "mandatory-buggy-whip-for-each-automobile" type law gets passed here mandating mines can't use robots - still doomed. All that would do is drive up the price of our coal as the rest of the world digs it up cheaper and cheaper.
Best thing we can do is accept it and move on. And plan for it. You're right - people should be *far* more worried about robots than the Chinese. Nobody is talking about how the coal industry is set to drop those 300,000 jobs. Everyone in the rural areas are all aglow with Trump getting elected. They're about to be sorely disappointed though when the robots take over those jobs. Don't think I'm bashing Trump there either - I'm not. Again, it'll happen no matter who the President is. It's just that with Trump he promised to fix things, and he can't. It'll be more bitter.
And the worst is yet to come. Nobody is talking about Google's self-driving car and what stands to happen when that gets perfected. We have 3,500,000 truck drivers employed in the USA. It's the most common profession today, truck driver. And pretty soon most of those people will be unemployed too. It absolutely will happen. What then?
We need to focus more on the future, what we know it will hold, and make our plans for it in the here-and-now.
Your concerns about tornadoes and cold weather and snow loading - these are things off the top of your head that you thought of within 5 minutes of skimming the article. I'm pretty certain the engineers - who spend their entire days working on this project - have thought of all of this.
That being said though, I'm with you. I would wait for a third party review as well. Let's get some objective pricing and usage data before we get too happy.
Um, do you not understand just about everything Trump did was equally staged? He knows how Television works.
Yes, exactly precisely this. The man has been in front of a TV camera for decades. He's a reality TV star. He knows how to make a false drama engaging. He's very good at it. It doesn't matter if anything he said was true or not, it was entertaining! Who cares if they don't do abortions in the 9th month? Who cares if we've only found about a few dozen actual cases of voter fraud? Play it up! Make it dramatic and absolutely nobody will care.
America, you just elected this guy.
Yeah me too. I know of 3 Trump voters, and all were for Bernie originally. I know of 4 more Bernie-or-busters that voted third party. You have it exactly perfectly right.
Science was settled on Newton, until Einstein came along and noticed that there is an asymptote at c. Then we had to amend Newton.
Science is a history of amendments. There are plenty in the future that we will discover, just as there are plenty in the past we already discovered.
A better and far more plausible explanation for what's happening is here.
And this fellow doesn't just do some hand waving. He has a theory, it is coherent, it is testable and falsifiable, and it also explains the galaxy rotation problem and the flyby anomaly accurately. As well as the EmDrive.
He's worth reading.
VGA out, and it runs a host of old hardware. Sega, NES, Amiga, C64, Apple II, too many to mention.
And they come with a full development kit. Altera Quartus and GCC, and you can make it do pretty much anything you want.
AT&T can determine where you are, and who you are talking to, and all sorts of super-spy stuff like that. But they can't figure out where robocalls are coming from and stop those? AT&T can find me, but they can't find fucking Rachel from Card Member Services?
Make it make sense to me, AT&T. I challenge you.
Your post pairs nicely with your signature.
I just knew this article would provoke stimulating and well thought out ideas, in a non-partisan way.
Well if you really want to see a movie on its release date there are not many legal options.
First off, you're exactly right. If you want to see something the minute it's released, that's the only way to go.
So I'd like to offer another thought. What's so great about that?
Seriously. What's so great about having something the minute it's available? We put a lot of importance on that for some reason. The 2017 Chevys are out early, the latest Star Wars film was just released, Apple just made a phone that is 2% faster than their last one.
Why do we care?
Perhaps that's the thing we should be examining. The theater isn't a barrier to seeing a movie, they're a barrier to seeing a just released movie. That movie you want to see will be the exact same movie a week or a month or a year from now. And you have plenty of legal avenues (and far cheaper ones, and far more pleasant ones) than going to a theater.
Maybe the real problem is instant gratification, and our dependence on it.
You can cheat the citizens, but you can never cheat Uncle Sam. Doesn't matter if we get screwed, only if the government sees a loss. Then suddenly it becomes a priority.
"YTMP3 rapidly and seamlessly removes the audio tracks contained in videos streamed from YouTube that YTMP3's users access, converts those audio tracks to an MP3 format, copies and stores them on YTMP3's servers, and then distributes copies of the MP3 audio files from its servers to its users in the United States, enabling its users to download those MP3 files to their computers, tablets, or smartphones,"
So, because something can be used to commit a crime, that is sufficient reason to assume that it is?
Guns can be used to commit a crime too. A lot of crime involves a gun. But we don't ban those, right?
I'm all for safe nuclear. Pebble bed reactors for the win.
But when you say algae biodiesel isn't available today, I think we're discussing two different things. You're saying you can't buy it today, and that's true. I'm saying we have the technology to make it if we wanted, which is also true.
As for startup cost, yeah. That will happen. But remember the first transistor was about the size of a baseball and took Bell Labs years to make. Now look what we can do. It'll be the same with algae if we choose to do it. Read that paper I posted. We already have had trial ponds and the numbers that paper uses come from those trial runs. What I'm saying is that we don't have to wait for some breakthrough like we would need to make hydrogen viable. We have everything we need right now. Land, sun, water, algae, and petrochemical infrastructure. All the pieces are already in place, just waiting for the word "go".
Here, read this. It's exciting! We could be doing this today.
If we wanted home grown diesel/gasoline, we could have it. We could stop pulling oil out of the ground and simply grow what we want. Easily and simply. By all means we should pursue nuclear and wind farms and the rest, but we should be doing this too.
Your body is composed of about 60% water, so it's clearly harmless! So go drink five gallons all at once and report back to us how it went.
Oh sure, it's not a sexy solution at all. I'd like to see a future with a Tesla in every garage and fusion plants dotting the landscape. And I do think we'll get there someday. But this approach does have the merit of being available today. It uses the petroleum infrastructure we already have in place, so no spin-up costs there. And it's 100% carbon neutral, which will become increasingly important in the next few decades.
Millions of years of evolution has already given us a pretty darn efficient solar energy battery in algae. Even in a future with wind farms everywhere or fusion or whatever, hydrocarbons are a hard to beat storage meduim in terms of energy density. A carbon neutral hydrocarbon solution would still have a place.
I take this article to be good news. Renewable energy is finally contributing to the grid well enough to where emissions will drop below the carbon emitted from transportation. This is excellent progress and excellent news.
Now, here's how you fix the transportation part. A wonderful article you can only find on the Wayback Machine, from 2004. UNH Biodiesel Group, Widescale Biodiesel Production from Algae, Michael Briggs, University of New Hampshire, Physics Department.
It's my favorite paper on the topic and I'll take any opportunity to post it.
TL;DR - if we really wanted to, we (meaning the USA) could utilize biodiesel entirely for our current transportation needs. It would be 100% renewable, carbon neutral, and all the money spent would stay inside our own borders. And any other country could easily do the same. There is absolutely NO need to haul oil out of the ground anymore.
Check the math in the paper. We really could do this.
Again, I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'd just like the question to be explored a bit more.
Morally it's quite clear, you simply don't consume the content. Justifying theft because of (supposed) shady business practices is not remotely moral.
Well, what if you don't think of it as theft? What if the movie is an advertisement, and the actual product is the merchandise? That's basically how it is, at least from the point of view of the creators of the content.
Let's say you love Star Wars. A safe assumption. And you want to reward George Lucas for putting something in your life that you love. Which makes more sense to do:
A) Buy the latest remastered blu ray. It'll set you back maybe $15, and George will see maybe a nickle of that. Corrupt Hollywood middlemen will see the other $14.95. They didn't have jack to do with the movie, they have just paid lawyers and positioned themselves in the middle as a barrier that must be crossed to get to the stuff you love.
B) Pirate it online, then buy a Jar Jar Binks figure. It'll set you back maybe $5, but George will see a dollar of that, and the corrupt assholes in the middle get bupkis.
Again, I'm not saying what you should do. Pirating movies is illegal and can get you in some serious hot water. I'm just asking people to think about the actual dynamics of the situation.
So you have no ethical issues pirating content? Please no BS about sticking it to the media corporations--that is just rationalizing the fact you are just a cheap jerk with no morals.
Is it ethical to give your money to an organization that will do this sort of skullduggery with it?
I'm being serious.
It's theft if you download content and view it for free, sure, but you're not exactly morally in the clear if you do pay. Your money is lining the pockets of famously and spectacularly corrupt middle men, with only pennies on the dollar going to the artists you love.
The correct thing to do isn't as clear as you might suppose. Morally, it may be more correct to pirate their content then buy a t-shirt or something from them, because they'll see most of that money. Most notably George Lucas is wealthy because of merchandise, not movies.
I'm not saying what to do, what not to do, or what I do - I just want you to think about it a bit before tossing out moral absolutes.
The story of North Korea does indeed have some heroes to it!
Lee Soon-ok
Kang Chol-hwan
An Hyuk
And plenty other survivors and escapees. Imagine what it would take to plan an escape from North Korea, and actually carry it out. Soon-ok and Chol-hwan served time in labor camps where they saw executions and human experimentation, and still had the stones to manage an escape knowing what horrible fate failure would get them. If that doesn't merit the label of hero, I don't know what would.
I was so worried about the people in between me and the music I like, earning their 98%.
This idea is ing stupid.