Pumps are very inefficient. I wonder why they wouldn't just use the excess energy to drive a motor/generator to pull an empty sphere towards the bottom with a cable and then generate energy in reverse as it rises up?
Valid argument. So, my thought is remove the limit entirely and start a radical new policy of requiring all workers involved in making products imported into America to get comparable pay to that position's average in America. It would both serve to solve our job outsourcing issues and become the humanitarian move of the century.
Unless Amazon is really believing they will increase sales by 50% and that it will all be new sales instead of sales taken from other stores, this is just moving jobs from other companies, like UPS, and putting them at Amazon.
This looks like a likely net job loss for the country due to increased efficiency of shipping and even more pressure on small businesses due to reducing the value of the immediacy of shopping down the street.
If not for walmart, It could also be seen as leveraging their monopoly and unhealthy due to adding to their vertical depth. Is a "duopoly" bad when it damages or destroys thousands of small businesses that spread wealth more effectively?
But not better than other 100K+ cars that can do 0-60 in 2.5. It outperforms cars that cost several times more AND STILL seats 5. Performance will win the long game in the US market. The same will be seen in the trucking industry soon. The low RPM torque of electric motors will be a big boon for heavy vehicles.
Companies have never stopped building in America. In the past few years, they've had to build and modernize a lot of facilities to get the production back to its current record levels without rehiring the workers lost in the 2009 time frame. Yet the net increase in factory jobs has been negligible. Here's a great chart showing what has happened.
That will continue. Actually, it would be surprising if we don't start seeing the jobs go lower while output goes up.
The difference is that now, all of those projects will be highly publicized and touted as due to Trump so that Trump can reward them with tax breaks they weren't getting before for the same thing.
Slashdot is showing its savvy. Just a little A/B testing here. I'm sure the analysis that results from all of these "dupes" will be earth-shattering when it comes out.
I recently stumbled on this article from 2014 that really nails the source of our recent issues and explains why even if all of our news perfectly matched the facts we'd still have the same disagreements. Just get past your reactions to the title and read the contents.
Humans are poor reasoners. We can talk ourselves into any position, often looking at the same facts as those with an opposite position and especially when identifying with a group that holds positions.
The only way past the bias is education directed toward how to think as opposed to what are the facts. That will never happen because all sides of the system thrive on this human vulnerability.
No. Their model was to be both employee and asset light. Now, they are being legally challenged by suits claiming their contractors are employees. Given the choice between adding employees to their model or assets to their model, they have decided that assets are more viable. It would be harder to avoid the taxi regulations with adding employed taxi drivers than driverless cars.
Easily predicted. Search for "ups driver robberies". We don't have our extreme laws protecting the US mail without reason. Sounds like a good job for a drone.
It's easy to jump on the bandwagon when it's finally rolling to riches. Wind and solar are now both under the cost of coal and will continue to drop as technology already in the pipeline matures and volume keeps increasing.
I saw someone post that we'd still be using oil in 2050. They are right, but it won't be for energy. There are many other uses that won't succomb as quickly. By that point, we'll probably be spraying solar cells onto everything around us for pennies on the dollar compared to deriving energy from petrochemicals.
We didn't reach peak oil so much as we reached critical mass on true renewables. If we keep resisting the inevitable, the only result that will come from it is being left behind as other countries rake in the bucks from the new businesses created.
I don't have any great suggestions for others because I can't seem to find what I think should be out there right now based on where tech is at. I'm looking for things for an advanced seven month old to enjoy over the next year, and I'm seriously thinking I may just have to get some little WiFi or bluetooth device (preferably cheaper/smaller than Alexa or Google's new offering), cut a stuffed animal open, and sew it in.
Does anyone know of a stuffed animal or something similar that has a bluetooth microphone/speaker combo built-in and uses software running on a computer or phone to help it (with adult guidance) interact with a child?
Do any of you know of a toy that simply answers the question "why?" with some semi-reasonable answer - endlessly - without tiring? Just a little bit of voice recognition tuned to the kid level, a (child safe) internet lookup to retrieve the answer, and some text-to-speech packaged in the form of a stuffed animal would be awesome.
Since the order in which sounds are learned (in general) is well known, is there a toy out there that detects what sounds the child is making, baby-talks back to them (during appropriate pauses) with those sounds sprinkled with the next ones in the progression, and gets excited in some way to encourage new ones when they are detected?
How about a toy that just says a calming "Shhhhh" and perhaps vibrates in a purring sort of way when they cry out at night?
Or a stuffed animal that simply reads whatever e-text I feed it?
If it is sold online, software is buying it. The bot is just another layer between the eventual end user and the seller - one of many. Why not simply ban all reselling of tickets while forcing the original source to repurchase (and resell at original cost if they so desire) any tickets that go unused in exchange for this protection?
As I read this, if I pay a thousand Amazon Turk users a buck a piece to buy the tickets, I'm good again. Whether the layer is a robot or a hubot doesn't really matter in the end.
And how is my personal digital assistant going to buy my tickets for me in the near future with laws like this? Wouldn't this ban having Google, Cortana, or Siri buy your ticket?
Printing money is mathematically identical to an inflationary pressure. If deflationary pressures are enough to balance it, inflation does not have to occur. Because it removes an equal amount of value from every dollar in the nation and transfers that value to the initial spender (the government in this case), it is in fact the most perfectly flat means of taxation of wealth.
That's right, our factory output is currently almost identical to 2008 levels (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS), yet our factory employment is still way down.
Our factory jobs have been given over to automation and increased productivity within our own country.
Wow. Then you need to do some more digging into the reality of the normal American.
A trivial search on "us debt to income ratio" yields an answer 370% for the the average U.S. household. Even assuming 300%, that individual above will normally be running a $540,000 debt. He's doing great to only be at $200K. If he reduces his spending to $100K per year (an unbelievable amount for someone who is only paying $24K per year on their mortgage), he'll be debt free within five years even giving 30% to taxes. With a mere 2% inflation, that $20K is matched by his net worth increase. A complete wash.
Frankly, if I were in the same situation, I'd cash out, quit my job, purchase a $150,000 house to live in, find an investment that guarantees about 3% on my money, and not worry about the rest of my life. I can easily make it on $20K per year with zero debt to pay.
We are rich beyond belief and completely misdiagnosing our problems. If the US's wealth and debt were evenly spread, every man, woman, and child would have over $300K in property with about $60,000 in debt. The middle class's success has not been given away to Mexico, China, and India. That is just misdirection. It is behind other doors within our own country.
But, back to the point. The inflationary pressure mentioned in the article is BS though it could be magically hyped into existence. The whole article is hype designed to boost someone's bitcoin investment.
Stop it with the debt crap! And stop comparing the spending of money against the GDP instead of our overall total value!
Let's say you own property worth $1,000,000, you have $200,000 in total debt, and you make $180,000 a year. Would you worry about spending an extra $20,000 this year?
Those numbers are the US economic numbers translated to personal terms.
The NET worth of the US was over $86 trillion at the end of last year. That's value minus debt folks. Get real.
With value like that, the government could spend nearly $5 trillion per year over taxes (enough for a $15K / year universal basic income for every American rich or poor) and only be creating about a 6% inflationary load against our overall worth. The resultant increase in consumer spending (people with less money spend a large portion of what they get instead of banking it) would be like attaching solid rocket boosters to the economy. With proper management, deflationary pressures could be created using the greater economies of scale to counteract the inflation. A win for all!
If all the grocery stores sold was bread, I suppose most of us would just eat bread. That doesn't make it a good thing. Netflix badly needs a real competitor. Perhaps turning movies and television shows into commodities and forcing all distributors to get the same non-exclusive deals might work. i.e., if I want to distribute a movie, I pay the same per viewing to do so as anyone else.
Just go ahead and take it all the way. In these modern times, people don't want to hear anything that doesn't just echo their beliefs. So, just have these chatbots automatically create "friends" for all users that echo their beliefs, never show a real person on anyone's page, and everyone can be happy.
Just set up a system that sends all pics to Hunt's phone for approval and if approval is not received or denied within a reasonable time, like 15 seconds, automatically forwards them. I'm sure he'll approve.
Slashdot Mirror
Pumps are very inefficient. I wonder why they wouldn't just use the excess energy to drive a motor/generator to pull an empty sphere towards the bottom with a cable and then generate energy in reverse as it rises up?
It's always great to see progress towards even the wackiest of sci-fi predictions... http://dune.wikia.com/wiki/Sli...
Valid argument. So, my thought is remove the limit entirely and start a radical new policy of requiring all workers involved in making products imported into America to get comparable pay to that position's average in America. It would both serve to solve our job outsourcing issues and become the humanitarian move of the century.
Unless Amazon is really believing they will increase sales by 50% and that it will all be new sales instead of sales taken from other stores, this is just moving jobs from other companies, like UPS, and putting them at Amazon.
This looks like a likely net job loss for the country due to increased efficiency of shipping and even more pressure on small businesses due to reducing the value of the immediacy of shopping down the street.
If not for walmart, It could also be seen as leveraging their monopoly and unhealthy due to adding to their vertical depth. Is a "duopoly" bad when it damages or destroys thousands of small businesses that spread wealth more effectively?
But not better than other 100K+ cars that can do 0-60 in 2.5. It outperforms cars that cost several times more AND STILL seats 5. Performance will win the long game in the US market. The same will be seen in the trucking industry soon. The low RPM torque of electric motors will be a big boon for heavy vehicles.
It's a hell of a growth curve, and the rest of us have always come after the 1% pays for the development. Frankly, I'd rather have it that way.
Companies have never stopped building in America. In the past few years, they've had to build and modernize a lot of facilities to get the production back to its current record levels without rehiring the workers lost in the 2009 time frame. Yet the net increase in factory jobs has been negligible. Here's a great chart showing what has happened.
That will continue. Actually, it would be surprising if we don't start seeing the jobs go lower while output goes up.
The difference is that now, all of those projects will be highly publicized and touted as due to Trump so that Trump can reward them with tax breaks they weren't getting before for the same thing.
Im not sure 'thesun.co.uk' is the best source for science news!
At least it's not Slashdot!
Slashdot is showing its savvy. Just a little A/B testing here. I'm sure the analysis that results from all of these "dupes" will be earth-shattering when it comes out.
The holiday season was part of their reasoning. It was obvious that they were going to kill it after the season.
Wasted effort.
I recently stumbled on this article from 2014 that really nails the source of our recent issues and explains why even if all of our news perfectly matched the facts we'd still have the same disagreements. Just get past your reactions to the title and read the contents.
Humans are poor reasoners. We can talk ourselves into any position, often looking at the same facts as those with an opposite position and especially when identifying with a group that holds positions.
The only way past the bias is education directed toward how to think as opposed to what are the facts. That will never happen because all sides of the system thrive on this human vulnerability.
No. Their model was to be both employee and asset light. Now, they are being legally challenged by suits claiming their contractors are employees. Given the choice between adding employees to their model or assets to their model, they have decided that assets are more viable. It would be harder to avoid the taxi regulations with adding employed taxi drivers than driverless cars.
Easily predicted. Search for "ups driver robberies". We don't have our extreme laws protecting the US mail without reason. Sounds like a good job for a drone.
It's easy to jump on the bandwagon when it's finally rolling to riches. Wind and solar are now both under the cost of coal and will continue to drop as technology already in the pipeline matures and volume keeps increasing.
I saw someone post that we'd still be using oil in 2050. They are right, but it won't be for energy. There are many other uses that won't succomb as quickly. By that point, we'll probably be spraying solar cells onto everything around us for pennies on the dollar compared to deriving energy from petrochemicals.
We didn't reach peak oil so much as we reached critical mass on true renewables. If we keep resisting the inevitable, the only result that will come from it is being left behind as other countries rake in the bucks from the new businesses created.
I don't have any great suggestions for others because I can't seem to find what I think should be out there right now based on where tech is at. I'm looking for things for an advanced seven month old to enjoy over the next year, and I'm seriously thinking I may just have to get some little WiFi or bluetooth device (preferably cheaper/smaller than Alexa or Google's new offering), cut a stuffed animal open, and sew it in.
Does anyone know of a stuffed animal or something similar that has a bluetooth microphone/speaker combo built-in and uses software running on a computer or phone to help it (with adult guidance) interact with a child?
Do any of you know of a toy that simply answers the question "why?" with some semi-reasonable answer - endlessly - without tiring? Just a little bit of voice recognition tuned to the kid level, a (child safe) internet lookup to retrieve the answer, and some text-to-speech packaged in the form of a stuffed animal would be awesome.
Since the order in which sounds are learned (in general) is well known, is there a toy out there that detects what sounds the child is making, baby-talks back to them (during appropriate pauses) with those sounds sprinkled with the next ones in the progression, and gets excited in some way to encourage new ones when they are detected?
How about a toy that just says a calming "Shhhhh" and perhaps vibrates in a purring sort of way when they cry out at night?
Or a stuffed animal that simply reads whatever e-text I feed it?
Why am I not finding things like this out there?
If it is sold online, software is buying it. The bot is just another layer between the eventual end user and the seller - one of many. Why not simply ban all reselling of tickets while forcing the original source to repurchase (and resell at original cost if they so desire) any tickets that go unused in exchange for this protection?
As I read this, if I pay a thousand Amazon Turk users a buck a piece to buy the tickets, I'm good again. Whether the layer is a robot or a hubot doesn't really matter in the end.
And how is my personal digital assistant going to buy my tickets for me in the near future with laws like this? Wouldn't this ban having Google, Cortana, or Siri buy your ticket?
The government of the US is a coop of its 330 million people. To separate it out is a distortion. We are it, and it is us.
Printing money is mathematically identical to an inflationary pressure. If deflationary pressures are enough to balance it, inflation does not have to occur. Because it removes an equal amount of value from every dollar in the nation and transfers that value to the initial spender (the government in this case), it is in fact the most perfectly flat means of taxation of wealth.
for tech companies that reduce the need for a commodity that their major distributors are over-profiting from.
That's right, our factory output is currently almost identical to 2008 levels (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OUTMS), yet our factory employment is still way down.
Our factory jobs have been given over to automation and increased productivity within our own country.
Wow. Then you need to do some more digging into the reality of the normal American.
A trivial search on "us debt to income ratio" yields an answer 370% for the the average U.S. household. Even assuming 300%, that individual above will normally be running a $540,000 debt. He's doing great to only be at $200K. If he reduces his spending to $100K per year (an unbelievable amount for someone who is only paying $24K per year on their mortgage), he'll be debt free within five years even giving 30% to taxes. With a mere 2% inflation, that $20K is matched by his net worth increase. A complete wash.
Frankly, if I were in the same situation, I'd cash out, quit my job, purchase a $150,000 house to live in, find an investment that guarantees about 3% on my money, and not worry about the rest of my life. I can easily make it on $20K per year with zero debt to pay.
We are rich beyond belief and completely misdiagnosing our problems. If the US's wealth and debt were evenly spread, every man, woman, and child would have over $300K in property with about $60,000 in debt. The middle class's success has not been given away to Mexico, China, and India. That is just misdirection. It is behind other doors within our own country.
But, back to the point. The inflationary pressure mentioned in the article is BS though it could be magically hyped into existence. The whole article is hype designed to boost someone's bitcoin investment.
Stop it with the debt crap! And stop comparing the spending of money against the GDP instead of our overall total value!
Let's say you own property worth $1,000,000, you have $200,000 in total debt, and you make $180,000 a year. Would you worry about spending an extra $20,000 this year?
Those numbers are the US economic numbers translated to personal terms.
The NET worth of the US was over $86 trillion at the end of last year. That's value minus debt folks. Get real.
With value like that, the government could spend nearly $5 trillion per year over taxes (enough for a $15K / year universal basic income for every American rich or poor) and only be creating about a 6% inflationary load against our overall worth. The resultant increase in consumer spending (people with less money spend a large portion of what they get instead of banking it) would be like attaching solid rocket boosters to the economy. With proper management, deflationary pressures could be created using the greater economies of scale to counteract the inflation. A win for all!
Stop the fear mongering!
If all the grocery stores sold was bread, I suppose most of us would just eat bread. That doesn't make it a good thing. Netflix badly needs a real competitor. Perhaps turning movies and television shows into commodities and forcing all distributors to get the same non-exclusive deals might work. i.e., if I want to distribute a movie, I pay the same per viewing to do so as anyone else.
Just go ahead and take it all the way. In these modern times, people don't want to hear anything that doesn't just echo their beliefs. So, just have these chatbots automatically create "friends" for all users that echo their beliefs, never show a real person on anyone's page, and everyone can be happy.
Just set up a system that sends all pics to Hunt's phone for approval and if approval is not received or denied within a reasonable time, like 15 seconds, automatically forwards them. I'm sure he'll approve.