Please reread the above comments for comprehension this time. We're on track to having nearly HALF the country out of work in the next couple of decades. And as I pointed out below, it doesn't matter how inexpensive things become if you have no job (and as such no income) with which to buy them.
And given current trends, it's looking as if more and more of the wealth generated by our increased productivity is going to be locked up by the top 1%, with a good chance that the rest of us is going to be living in a Matt Damon/Elysium-style world, begging for scraps and choking on our own pollution.
So tell me, oh wise one, given our current corporate, economic and political structure, do you see all of that wealth and productivity being distributed to those that need it? Or will the rich keep on getting richer while more and more people and regions lose work, lose income, and lose hope?
The benefits of automation and productivity and renewable energy can be used to benefit us all... or a very, very, very few.
Hence my comment regarding tectonic upheavals. Without good planning, things in our country could get very dramatic... and extremely messy, with no guarantees that the future we get is the one best for us all.
Except that truck driving and delivery is being automated. Order picking and fulfillment is being automated. Stocking and inventory is being automated.
And those jobs with it. To those people, it doesn't matter if the phone is $300 or $50. Without a job and the income it provides, both are equally out of reach.
It's estimated that up to 45% of the jobs that people in the US currently do today are up for automation in the next couple of decades. That's 45% of the workforce, and if you're one of the those dislocated you're not going to just be able to switch to another field, because people there have also been dislocated and they're also looking for work.
If you took a list of jobs, ranked by the number of people who do each one, you'll have to go all of the way down to number 33 on the list to find a new job that didn't exist 100 years ago: computer programmer.
Sure, there have been technological advancements and "new" jobs, but most "new" jobs aren't new at all, because by and large the general categories have remained the same: driver, delivery man, manager, secretary, assembly line worker. It's just today that the assembly line worker snaps together circuit boards and screens as opposed to stamping car parts or sewing together buggy whips.
The cabby of today was the carriage driver of yesterday, and, if Uber has it's way, replaced by the self-driving car of tomorrow. In fact, Uber has publicly stated that it's looking to replace all of the cab drivers in NY (51,000) with autonomous vehicles in the next decade.
Major trucking companies are looking to replace their biggest expense (drivers) with autonomous trucks (trials are running... today). There go 3.5 million truck drivers.
And if all of those autonomous vehicles hit their safety numbers, then accidents decline dramatically. That's fewer mechanics and body shop workers, fewer insurance claims adjusters, fewer ambulance and emergency room workers and staff, fewer police needed for speed traps, fewer cooks and truck stop workers, and so on, in every town and city across the US.
Pretty soon you have massive dislocations as entire local industries collapse and -- even worse -- as the industries that depended upon the incomes of those workers collapse, which widens the circle even further. (Can't run a restaurant serving food to people who can't pay for it.)
All told, here in the US we're looking at employment disruptions measured in the tens of millions, and all of them occurring within the next decade.
The Great Depression had an unemployment rate of 25%. What happens when that number hits 45%?
I'd advise that everyone watch the following video, Humans Need Not Apply
Apple already does something like this for parts like camera lenses, where a camera scans a batch of available parts and picks the one with the best fit for the current body.
If they can do that, they're fully capable of, say, selecting the type of camera module you might want and plugging that into a BTO phone.
Or increase the costs of shipping, since we now have to ship all of the parts from the factories and fabs where they are made to the new factory for assembly.
According to teardowns, component and assembly costs for phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Note 7 are in the same $250-ish price range and Samsung doesn't do their own system software R&D.
So either Samsung is also gouging their customers... or perhaps there's just a little bit more to phone costs other than the price of a chip, case, battery, and screen...
Except that practically no one pays that rate. This was a quick search, but...
Ford F -0.45% pre-tax income: $6.52 billion CEO Alan Mulally total pay: $23.2 million U.S. corporate income tax total: refund of $19 million
GM GM -1.56% pre-tax income: $4.88 billion CEO Daniel Ackerson total pay: $9.1 million U.S. corporate income tax total: refund of $34 million
Large American companies pay an effective corporate tax rate closer to 12.6%, according to the Government Accountability Office. They pay more to their CEO's than they pay in corporate income tax.
Got to love the folk who attempt to make the case against science and scientific methods... by typing on the modern day equivalent of a super-computer that sends their rants at near the speed of light to another super-computer complex located halfway across the continent.
One note: The Skylake chips used in the high end MBP are quad-core. The Kaby Lake chips that are shipping are dual-core and apparently Intel won't be shipping quad-core chips for several months.
You mean like the same "failure" mode that crashed the Tesla into the semi? Yes, that failure mode is (was) in all of them, but only one out of the thousands on the road managed to trip the scenario that caused a crash.
Further, while an alert, attentive driver could have avoided the collision, there are plenty of less-alert, distracted drivers out there who could well have plowed into the same semi in the same scenario.
And baring a true mechanical issue (that can occur in all cars), there's no need for massive recalls in case of a software glitch, just download the latest update into the car's computer overnight and the next morning everyone's good to go.
We're overlooking the accidents, injuries, and deaths today. You probably drove today, despite knowing its one of the most dangerous things you do daily.
And seriously, look at all of the idiots and distracted drivers on the road. Do you really think a car that's actively monitoring its environment thousands of times a second can actually do WORSE?
Slipped a decimal point on the last one (see a different comment where I got it right) but 5 million accidents, 2.5 million injuries, and 30,000 deaths. Per year.
Reminds of the debates over the "Star Trek" replicator economy. Problem is, "who owns the replicator'. If it's you, you're good to go. If, however, someone else controls it and what it produces and wants you to pay for the results... then you're screwed.
You don't need the system to be perfect. Here in the US it just needs to avoid some 5.5 million auto accidents each and every year that in turn injured 2.5 million people and killed 30,000 others.
Could some glitch run a car into a wall? Maybe.
But that's one death vs all of the others where dumb, drunk, distracted, texting, road raging idiots drove their cars into walls, other cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc..
".... but a human will be handling edge cases much better for a long time..."
Assuming, of course, that they're actually paying attention and not talking on the phone, texting, playing Pokemon, fiddling with the radio/cd/mp3 player, trying to each breakfast/lunch, not putting on makeup/clothes/shoes, smoking, dealing with the baby or kids in the backseat, daydreaming, or otherwise disengaged.
Five million accidents, 2.5 million injuries, and 300,000 deaths a year in the US alone pretty much put the lie to "much better'....
Slashdot Mirror
I believe it's more common to apply the brakes and feather the blades into the wind. I've yet to see a wind turbine around here with blades that fold.
Please reread the above comments for comprehension this time. We're on track to having nearly HALF the country out of work in the next couple of decades. And as I pointed out below, it doesn't matter how inexpensive things become if you have no job (and as such no income) with which to buy them.
And given current trends, it's looking as if more and more of the wealth generated by our increased productivity is going to be locked up by the top 1%, with a good chance that the rest of us is going to be living in a Matt Damon/Elysium-style world, begging for scraps and choking on our own pollution.
So tell me, oh wise one, given our current corporate, economic and political structure, do you see all of that wealth and productivity being distributed to those that need it? Or will the rich keep on getting richer while more and more people and regions lose work, lose income, and lose hope?
The benefits of automation and productivity and renewable energy can be used to benefit us all... or a very, very, very few.
Hence my comment regarding tectonic upheavals. Without good planning, things in our country could get very dramatic... and extremely messy, with no guarantees that the future we get is the one best for us all.
Except that truck driving and delivery is being automated. Order picking and fulfillment is being automated. Stocking and inventory is being automated.
And those jobs with it. To those people, it doesn't matter if the phone is $300 or $50. Without a job and the income it provides, both are equally out of reach.
It's estimated that up to 45% of the jobs that people in the US currently do today are up for automation in the next couple of decades. That's 45% of the workforce, and if you're one of the those dislocated you're not going to just be able to switch to another field, because people there have also been dislocated and they're also looking for work.
If you took a list of jobs, ranked by the number of people who do each one, you'll have to go all of the way down to number 33 on the list to find a new job that didn't exist 100 years ago: computer programmer.
Sure, there have been technological advancements and "new" jobs, but most "new" jobs aren't new at all, because by and large the general categories have remained the same: driver, delivery man, manager, secretary, assembly line worker. It's just today that the assembly line worker snaps together circuit boards and screens as opposed to stamping car parts or sewing together buggy whips.
The cabby of today was the carriage driver of yesterday, and, if Uber has it's way, replaced by the self-driving car of tomorrow. In fact, Uber has publicly stated that it's looking to replace all of the cab drivers in NY (51,000) with autonomous vehicles in the next decade.
Major trucking companies are looking to replace their biggest expense (drivers) with autonomous trucks (trials are running... today). There go 3.5 million truck drivers.
And if all of those autonomous vehicles hit their safety numbers, then accidents decline dramatically. That's fewer mechanics and body shop workers, fewer insurance claims adjusters, fewer ambulance and emergency room workers and staff, fewer police needed for speed traps, fewer cooks and truck stop workers, and so on, in every town and city across the US.
Pretty soon you have massive dislocations as entire local industries collapse and -- even worse -- as the industries that depended upon the incomes of those workers collapse, which widens the circle even further. (Can't run a restaurant serving food to people who can't pay for it.)
All told, here in the US we're looking at employment disruptions measured in the tens of millions, and all of them occurring within the next decade.
The Great Depression had an unemployment rate of 25%. What happens when that number hits 45%?
I'd advise that everyone watch the following video, Humans Need Not Apply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
I'm not a Luddite, but I am worried that our civilization is going to go through a few major tectonic upheavals in a relatively short period of time.
Apple already does something like this for parts like camera lenses, where a camera scans a batch of available parts and picks the one with the best fit for the current body.
If they can do that, they're fully capable of, say, selecting the type of camera module you might want and plugging that into a BTO phone.
Or increase the costs of shipping, since we now have to ship all of the parts from the factories and fabs where they are made to the new factory for assembly.
So much for transparency....
Not the only one, no. Just a little time spent learning proper English grammar can go a long way towards disguising a lack of formal education.
According to teardowns, component and assembly costs for phones like the Samsung Galaxy S7 and Note 7 are in the same $250-ish price range and Samsung doesn't do their own system software R&D.
So either Samsung is also gouging their customers... or perhaps there's just a little bit more to phone costs other than the price of a chip, case, battery, and screen...
I take it you haven't seen the video with the robot that doesn't require programming?
http://spectrum.ieee.org/robot...
Except that practically no one pays that rate. This was a quick search, but...
Ford F -0.45% pre-tax income: $6.52 billion
CEO Alan Mulally total pay: $23.2 million
U.S. corporate income tax total: refund of $19 million
GM GM -1.56% pre-tax income: $4.88 billion
CEO Daniel Ackerson total pay: $9.1 million
U.S. corporate income tax total: refund of $34 million
Large American companies pay an effective corporate tax rate closer to 12.6%, according to the Government Accountability Office. They pay more to their CEO's than they pay in corporate income tax.
Got to love the folk who attempt to make the case against science and scientific methods... by typing on the modern day equivalent of a super-computer that sends their rants at near the speed of light to another super-computer complex located halfway across the continent.
One note: The Skylake chips used in the high end MBP are quad-core. The Kaby Lake chips that are shipping are dual-core and apparently Intel won't be shipping quad-core chips for several months.
You can't ship what you don't have.
Well, I just got back from Apple's website where I found out that the new MBP 15" still maxes out at 16GB RAM. Arrrgggghg!!!!
I refuse to upgrade until they give me 32GB, minimum!
Then I guess it's okay, because the name changes are certainly not trivial....
There's a difference between stabilizing the language (3.0) and the ABI (4.0).
You mean like the same "failure" mode that crashed the Tesla into the semi? Yes, that failure mode is (was) in all of them, but only one out of the thousands on the road managed to trip the scenario that caused a crash.
Further, while an alert, attentive driver could have avoided the collision, there are plenty of less-alert, distracted drivers out there who could well have plowed into the same semi in the same scenario.
And baring a true mechanical issue (that can occur in all cars), there's no need for massive recalls in case of a software glitch, just download the latest update into the car's computer overnight and the next morning everyone's good to go.
But we're not talking replicators, but robots. He who owns the robots and resources probably isn't going to just give the end product away for free.
Hence the disruption.
We're overlooking the accidents, injuries, and deaths today. You probably drove today, despite knowing its one of the most dangerous things you do daily.
And seriously, look at all of the idiots and distracted drivers on the road. Do you really think a car that's actively monitoring its environment thousands of times a second can actually do WORSE?
Slipped a decimal point on the last one (see a different comment where I got it right) but 5 million accidents, 2.5 million injuries, and 30,000 deaths. Per year.
Reminds of the debates over the "Star Trek" replicator economy. Problem is, "who owns the replicator'. If it's you, you're good to go. If, however, someone else controls it and what it produces and wants you to pay for the results... then you're screwed.
You don't need the system to be perfect. Here in the US it just needs to avoid some 5.5 million auto accidents each and every year that in turn injured 2.5 million people and killed 30,000 others.
Could some glitch run a car into a wall? Maybe.
But that's one death vs all of the others where dumb, drunk, distracted, texting, road raging idiots drove their cars into walls, other cars, pedestrians, bikes, etc..
As far as you're concerned, yes, it's magic.
".... but a human will be handling edge cases much better for a long time..."
Assuming, of course, that they're actually paying attention and not talking on the phone, texting, playing Pokemon, fiddling with the radio/cd/mp3 player, trying to each breakfast/lunch, not putting on makeup/clothes/shoes, smoking, dealing with the baby or kids in the backseat, daydreaming, or otherwise disengaged.
Five million accidents, 2.5 million injuries, and 300,000 deaths a year in the US alone pretty much put the lie to "much better'....
Or just find somebody to sue. Should be fun...