You might not want it to be your only vehicle, but an electric pickup might do quite well as a farm truck and in the construction industry. There are also a LOT of status symbol pickups in the city.
It's been pretty close a few times. In fact, I doubt many people would trust banks if they didn't all have government backed insurance.
And banks provide a real service (they'll "store" your money for you). Putting money in a bank is at least safer than keeping it under your pillow. Putting money in bitcoin, either with a shady Internet exchange or in your own wallet on your poorly backed up computer, doesn't seem to be.
Curious timing hey? The US stealth aircraft program started flying prototypes in December 1977 and the B2 was publicly rolled-out in 1988.
There is a certain amount of circumstance that could suggest the US government had something to do with starting or encouraging the UFO craze as a cover for testing stealth aircraft. What's that, you saw something weird flying around that was apparently not visible on radar? Silly UFO nuts.
That turns out to be unlikely. There is some correlation with richer countries being less violent, but better explanatory variables are the trust placed in societal authority (the government) and the integration of the national group with others.
Those causes tend to support the idea that a very advanced society would have very low rates of violence... among themselves. There's still the possibility that they would be xenophobic, or that they would be prone to violence against outsiders with few ties to their society.
There are very good arguments that the state of our fellow humans today isn't due to available calories, it's due to the way we've messed with the form of those calories.
The drawback of plant-based substitute meat is that you have to put all your faith in corporate food engineering, and that industry has demonstrated on more than one occasion that they will not only take a casual attitude to towards the health of their customers, but will also actively cover up known concerns with their products.
The US has some of the most expensive health care in the world. The socialised systems are uniformly cheaper (and not by a little bit).
Taxes in many more socialised countries tend to be a bit higher than the US (not as much as you might expect) but it's not for healthcare, it's for all the other things.
Gold is pretty. It's rare, shiny, doesn't corrode, and is easily worked with primitive tools. Gold was valued for decoration. That value made it a good candidate for money because you had to use *something*, but not the only one: also copper, silver, platinum, palladium, all shiny, reasonably easily worked and useful as decoration.
Wow, you managed to pick some unfortunate examples. There was indeed an Internet bubble (more than one), and it actually chugged along in relative obscurity until the first.com bubble when the web was about ten years old. Once that one popped there was some more responsible growth until the web 2.0 bubble... roughly ten years later. About ten years further on, with multibillion dollar valuations for "social media" companies that seem to be mostly vapour... Internet bubble 3.0?
That seems to be a temporary state. Governments didn't anticipate that their citizens would go trading money for a mention on the internet, so they didn't check for it. Now that they realize that's a thing, their interest is increasing. For example, the US IRS demanding transaction records from the bitcoin exchanges.
You could use bitcoin with minimal accountability only because it was obscure. Now that it's caught on, it actually has maximum accountability.
Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps each country could certify their own brokers, but they'd all be connected through international agreements and treaties. Implement a system for transferring funds, owned and run privately but regulated by those same international agreements. You could call them, I don't know, banks or something.
You're looking for m/s, which is the standard unit for speed. Both metres and seconds are base units, defined in terms of observables that depend on fundamental physics.
Convention is to leave the seconds but apply an SI prefix to the metres. Oumaumua was travelling almost 60 km/s.
And that's the problem. It's fine when bitcoin is an experiment and most of the players "mined it for free." When real idiots who debt financed their holdings start losing their shirts, the game changes abruptly. The wider world already things "crypto" is some kind of new wonder investment called bitcoin. If bitcoin crashes, "crypto" is going to get a generally bad name.
They're different things. Government currencies are for spending. The knights templar didn't give out their own currency, they gave out credit notes. Like when I deposit my paycheque into the bank, go to Europe, and use my debit card. It does the foreign exchange calculation and deducts the balance from my bank account. My debit card isn't a currency, and the entire exchange takes place completely in government backed currencies.
The US dollar is pretty well trusted globally, at the level of individual merchants. At any level above that the currency of pretty much any western nation is trusted.
Bitcoin did seem to have promise as a means of moving money, but the only reason to do that with bitcoin instead of dollars or euro is because regulations hadn't caught up to bitcoin yet. Problem is, bitcoin is so volatile that it doesn't work well for that either, unless you're desperate.
I don't see how a backup generator would be a problem except if you're working on wiring in the home itself, or the line from the transformer to the residence. So be extra careful there. It's not like PV installations are subtle, although a generator turning on unexpectedly could be.
The implication by people who bring up this kind of objection seems to be that some lineman working on some big high voltage line somewhere is going to get zapped because some homeowner hidden among a thousand others has hooked something up wrong. I don't really see how that could happen, but if it can and somebody actually knows how, I'd be curious to hear the details.
I could be wrong, but there seem to be good technical reasons why a lineman wouldn't be in much danger from that kind of mistake, with the exception of working on the transformer-to-residence line itself.
I'm also not terribly sympathetic to the argument that we shouldn't do anything new because it's conceivable somebody who is breaking the law might create a circumstance where somebody who is not doing their job properly might get hurt. If linemen are getting zapped that's not a technical problem, it's an issue with their employer, union and local labor regulations.
It does, but IIRC the definition of productive was pretty broad. Basically, work related to the job. What they found was that there's a lot of socializing, Facebook, etc. that goes on. The point of the study wasn't that we're all goofing off at work, it was that we really don't work as much as we claim to, and in fact can't work as much as we claim to. When, for example, a programmer puts on headphones and does a few hours of no distractions, intense coding, that might easily be equivalent to the amount of actual work that other people did that day, just concentrated in one go.
Is this a real thing? It seems pretty unlikely. First, you'd have to somehow manage to get around electrical codes and inspection. Then your little home PV unit would have to take up some significant part of the whole load of your neighbourhood. Then the linemen would have to be bad enough at their jobs that they didn't check the line before grabbing hold if it.
Depends on whether you lie or not. Facebook thinks I'm a senior citizen. Google is convinced I'm 13. The dissonance between ads I get is almost entertaining enough not to block them.
Your definition isn't quite correct, but it's better than that of the subject of the article. Yours is the definition of efficiency. Productivity would be the total output. The one in the article is something else... stupidity?
"You very quickly get people manufacturing needs and faking their hard work under communism."
Sure, capitalism doesn't have anybody manufacturing needs and faking their hard work.
Except, in the world's capitalist bastion (the USA) research suggests anybody who says they work more than 40 hours a week is lying, most white collar workers actually do more like two or three cumulative hours of productive work a day, the performance you get from an executive is inversely proportional to their salary, and entire job classes, many of them "elite," are demonstrably no better than flipping coins (e.g. financial managers).
Lying about your usefulness and inventing make work to keep the proles in line isn't a communist thing. It's a more-than-one-person-in-a-group thing. Actually, I bet most people isolated in the wilderness would also lie to themselves about how much work they actually did.
Slashdot Mirror
You might not want it to be your only vehicle, but an electric pickup might do quite well as a farm truck and in the construction industry. There are also a LOT of status symbol pickups in the city.
It's been pretty close a few times. In fact, I doubt many people would trust banks if they didn't all have government backed insurance.
And banks provide a real service (they'll "store" your money for you). Putting money in a bank is at least safer than keeping it under your pillow. Putting money in bitcoin, either with a shady Internet exchange or in your own wallet on your poorly backed up computer, doesn't seem to be.
Curious timing hey? The US stealth aircraft program started flying prototypes in December 1977 and the B2 was publicly rolled-out in 1988.
There is a certain amount of circumstance that could suggest the US government had something to do with starting or encouraging the UFO craze as a cover for testing stealth aircraft. What's that, you saw something weird flying around that was apparently not visible on radar? Silly UFO nuts.
That turns out to be unlikely. There is some correlation with richer countries being less violent, but better explanatory variables are the trust placed in societal authority (the government) and the integration of the national group with others.
Those causes tend to support the idea that a very advanced society would have very low rates of violence... among themselves. There's still the possibility that they would be xenophobic, or that they would be prone to violence against outsiders with few ties to their society.
There are very good arguments that the state of our fellow humans today isn't due to available calories, it's due to the way we've messed with the form of those calories.
The drawback of plant-based substitute meat is that you have to put all your faith in corporate food engineering, and that industry has demonstrated on more than one occasion that they will not only take a casual attitude to towards the health of their customers, but will also actively cover up known concerns with their products.
The US has some of the most expensive health care in the world. The socialised systems are uniformly cheaper (and not by a little bit).
Taxes in many more socialised countries tend to be a bit higher than the US (not as much as you might expect) but it's not for healthcare, it's for all the other things.
Gold is pretty. It's rare, shiny, doesn't corrode, and is easily worked with primitive tools. Gold was valued for decoration. That value made it a good candidate for money because you had to use *something*, but not the only one: also copper, silver, platinum, palladium, all shiny, reasonably easily worked and useful as decoration.
Wow, you managed to pick some unfortunate examples. There was indeed an Internet bubble (more than one), and it actually chugged along in relative obscurity until the first .com bubble when the web was about ten years old. Once that one popped there was some more responsible growth until the web 2.0 bubble... roughly ten years later. About ten years further on, with multibillion dollar valuations for "social media" companies that seem to be mostly vapour... Internet bubble 3.0?
That seems to be a temporary state. Governments didn't anticipate that their citizens would go trading money for a mention on the internet, so they didn't check for it. Now that they realize that's a thing, their interest is increasing. For example, the US IRS demanding transaction records from the bitcoin exchanges.
You could use bitcoin with minimal accountability only because it was obscure. Now that it's caught on, it actually has maximum accountability.
Sounds like a good idea. Perhaps each country could certify their own brokers, but they'd all be connected through international agreements and treaties. Implement a system for transferring funds, owned and run privately but regulated by those same international agreements. You could call them, I don't know, banks or something.
You're looking for m/s, which is the standard unit for speed. Both metres and seconds are base units, defined in terms of observables that depend on fundamental physics.
Convention is to leave the seconds but apply an SI prefix to the metres. Oumaumua was travelling almost 60 km/s.
Or parking a train loaded with oil on top of a hill and forgetting to put the brakes on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
And that's the problem. It's fine when bitcoin is an experiment and most of the players "mined it for free." When real idiots who debt financed their holdings start losing their shirts, the game changes abruptly. The wider world already things "crypto" is some kind of new wonder investment called bitcoin. If bitcoin crashes, "crypto" is going to get a generally bad name.
They're different things. Government currencies are for spending. The knights templar didn't give out their own currency, they gave out credit notes. Like when I deposit my paycheque into the bank, go to Europe, and use my debit card. It does the foreign exchange calculation and deducts the balance from my bank account. My debit card isn't a currency, and the entire exchange takes place completely in government backed currencies.
The US dollar is pretty well trusted globally, at the level of individual merchants. At any level above that the currency of pretty much any western nation is trusted.
Bitcoin did seem to have promise as a means of moving money, but the only reason to do that with bitcoin instead of dollars or euro is because regulations hadn't caught up to bitcoin yet. Problem is, bitcoin is so volatile that it doesn't work well for that either, unless you're desperate.
They cost about $20-$30 from Amazon and I can replace one in about ten minutes. I imagine an actual tech who does it regularly could do it in under 5.
I remember I bought an extra battery for a Nokia 6180 way back. It was something like $60. In the 90s.
I don't see how a backup generator would be a problem except if you're working on wiring in the home itself, or the line from the transformer to the residence. So be extra careful there. It's not like PV installations are subtle, although a generator turning on unexpectedly could be.
The implication by people who bring up this kind of objection seems to be that some lineman working on some big high voltage line somewhere is going to get zapped because some homeowner hidden among a thousand others has hooked something up wrong. I don't really see how that could happen, but if it can and somebody actually knows how, I'd be curious to hear the details.
I could be wrong, but there seem to be good technical reasons why a lineman wouldn't be in much danger from that kind of mistake, with the exception of working on the transformer-to-residence line itself.
I'm also not terribly sympathetic to the argument that we shouldn't do anything new because it's conceivable somebody who is breaking the law might create a circumstance where somebody who is not doing their job properly might get hurt. If linemen are getting zapped that's not a technical problem, it's an issue with their employer, union and local labor regulations.
It does, but IIRC the definition of productive was pretty broad. Basically, work related to the job. What they found was that there's a lot of socializing, Facebook, etc. that goes on. The point of the study wasn't that we're all goofing off at work, it was that we really don't work as much as we claim to, and in fact can't work as much as we claim to. When, for example, a programmer puts on headphones and does a few hours of no distractions, intense coding, that might easily be equivalent to the amount of actual work that other people did that day, just concentrated in one go.
Is this a real thing? It seems pretty unlikely. First, you'd have to somehow manage to get around electrical codes and inspection. Then your little home PV unit would have to take up some significant part of the whole load of your neighbourhood. Then the linemen would have to be bad enough at their jobs that they didn't check the line before grabbing hold if it.
Launching photovoltaics would certainly be silly. But launching thin film mirrors, maybe not so much.
In the long term, manufacturing PV and mirrors on the moon and bringing them to Earth orbit might also be a good idea.
Japan had that problem. It probably still does. Along with a sky high middle aged male suicide rate.
Answers:
1. The latter. 2. The latter.
Which do you think is most valuable in terms of respect and money granted to the individual? A. The latter.
And that's the problem with our society.
Depends on whether you lie or not. Facebook thinks I'm a senior citizen. Google is convinced I'm 13. The dissonance between ads I get is almost entertaining enough not to block them.
Your definition isn't quite correct, but it's better than that of the subject of the article. Yours is the definition of efficiency. Productivity would be the total output. The one in the article is something else... stupidity?
"You very quickly get people manufacturing needs and faking their hard work under communism."
Sure, capitalism doesn't have anybody manufacturing needs and faking their hard work.
Except, in the world's capitalist bastion (the USA) research suggests anybody who says they work more than 40 hours a week is lying, most white collar workers actually do more like two or three cumulative hours of productive work a day, the performance you get from an executive is inversely proportional to their salary, and entire job classes, many of them "elite," are demonstrably no better than flipping coins (e.g. financial managers).
Lying about your usefulness and inventing make work to keep the proles in line isn't a communist thing. It's a more-than-one-person-in-a-group thing. Actually, I bet most people isolated in the wilderness would also lie to themselves about how much work they actually did.