Frankly, I don't think Tesla needs to play the bootlegger-and-baptist game with fuel economy regulations to be competitive with ICE carmakers, they just need to be price and performance competitive within their model segments.
They can hit price in one of two basic ways: 1) Lower their own costs 2) Their competition has to increase their own price across the board
It seems they're playing both sides on this one. They are trying to reduce their own costs, but by lobbying to at least maintain the current standards (if not tighten them), they force the competition to increase the cost of their R&D/vehicles to bring them more in line with Tesla's offerings.
If companies that provide auto insurance are smart and see the writing on the wall (I have to assume so, since they are entirely about risk/benefit analysis), they will gradually transform into a different kind of entity. While they'll still provide insurance, they'll turn into a "subscription" version of a car rental company: Customers with the proper plan can request a self-driving car for certain periods, and may even receive a discount for doing so over using their traditional vehicle.
As autonomous car adoption rates increase, these hybrid companies will move more towards being an "auto club", where people pay a monthly fee (likely comparable to the combined cost of a loan payment+insurance) and will be able to order up self-driving cars. Depending on their plan, it may only be with advance planning and an extra charge for on-demand, or it is unlimited on-demand. They use the vehicle as necessary, then send it back.
They might only get so much time to allow it to sit idle, so if they're going to spend a day at Disneyland they have a car that will bring them, send it away, and order another when they go home. In fact, such "clubs" will likely have garages right outside of amusement parks. After all, if your car can drive itself, and you don't need to leave anything in the vehicle, why bother with parking? You could send it home, or to a far-off lot. And if you're going to do that, why bother with owning a vehicle at all? You can avoid all the maintenance of ownership, the cost of having a garage, and registration fees by just using one of these clubs.
The companies will still offer insurance: there will always be people who want to own their own car, self-driving or not. But that will become a "side" business, and the remaining portions of existing businesses may be sold off until you have only a handful of national auto insurers. I doubt the companies that focus on consumers would sell insurance to car companies, as the car companies have their existing liability insurance that will just increase if/when there's added risk from autonomous cars.
In the US, bullying isn't a problem so much as it is a national past time. Americans love power, and people with power; one way to increase your own (apparent) power is to decrease the (apparent) power of your rival. And then people will vote for whoever they think has the most apparent power (so long as that person has the right capital letter next to their name on the ballot.)
We do a lot of things weird here. Blow a guy's head off during prime time television? What, you're telling me you only did it once? Do it five times, think of the advertising revenue! Oh, you want to include a scene that shows a woman's nipple for half a second during that same time frame? No, sorry, you have to go to jail now.
I think that America (and Americans) has an incredibly amount of potential, but it's significantly hampered by our weird mix of "morals" and in-fighting over issues which, relative to the country as a whole, are fairly irrelevant but get all the focus.
Considering how many things are straight-up clones, especially in the Android market, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a handful of companies that pump out cheap (to develop), crap, copy+paste games and put this kind of stuff in them.
I am imagining a Drone-seeking Drone. Something larger and faster than the average "consumer" "drone", which ideally can capture a drone, bring to police, and they can impound it; or (if unable to catch it) has a tethered stun net it can use to shoot at, disable, and pull in the offending drone.
That goal might be a technically sound one, but I don't think it's politically viable.
But it is an economical one.
Once self-driving cars have a track record proven to be at least as reliable as a human's (and likely not even then, probably when it's 50% more reliable) and the cost of such vehicles has dropped to a middle income range, insurance policies will start favoring them. Self-driving cars will cost them far less (so long as the self-driving car records actions taken in manual mode, if one is provided), so the rates for manual-only vehicles will increase quickly. The rich will be able to afford them, but it might come to the point where insurance costs more per month than the vehicle covered. Insurance rates will force wide adoption of self-driving vehicles. (I also think that insurance companies will become, at least in part, a car rental-like place where the insured can summon a self-driving vehicle and use it for a limited time as part of their package.)
I expect that existing manual-only vehicles would be grandfathered in so as not to create a huge onus on the poor/lower class (likely forced through government regulation). Probably also less for those living in the country/rural areas, where self-driving cars might have less reliability.
Any sufficiently understood Magic is indistinguishable from Technology
Advanced technology can be incredibly hard for all but a small group to understand, hence magic. Magic that can be routinely, consistently applied at a basic level is understandable by most, hence technology.
While the reasonable forces behind increased gender parity in tech/gaming are dwindling, I don't think "Social Justice Warriors" are going to go away anytime soon. But, as you say, there is actual social injustice in America and the world over. Those who actually work towards equality will unfortunately get lumped in with that label.
I would like to propose a new term for such a group, those who use "social justice" as a battering ram to force others into submission, get attention, or otherwise cause unnecessary problems: Totalitarian Imperative for Equality (or TIE, for short.)
I read (some of) a sociology paper that looked at violence in legalized prostitution. One of the things that struck me as odd was the explicit declaration that STD transmission, whether intentional or not, was investigated as a form of "violence". While getting an STD is a real concern for that industry, and not a good thing in any way, I think that labeling it as "violence" does a huge disservice to those who suffer actual violence. It's not that much of a stretch, I suppose, as harm is actually inflicted, but then you could define a pop fly ball hitting a fan on the head as violence, or parking in a handicap-only spot and forcing someone who actually is handicap to park farther away (a douche move, but not violence.)
So the staff at Reddit don't even need "subs which we don't like", they can just start labeling things they find uncomfortable as a definition of "violence".
I've always thought that an almagamation of the generic up/down (shown as Ars Technica does, where you see cumulative, total up, and total down) and Slashdot's karma system would be best. The up/down would show the overall approval or disapproval of a comment, but the Karma moderation is what hides it or brings it to the front. Thus you can understand the overall community's feelings (if that matters to you) but still have unpopular-yet-interesting posts rise. Up/down would not affect a user's Karma in any way.
This might have the extra benefit of making people use Offtopic/Troll for their actual purpose, rather than using them as "-1, Dislike". Won't stop that completely, but giving them a more representative outlet would likely lower such antics.
it's been for things that are actually non-factual and fact-checkable
That is, if multiple "facts" given in a comment can be easily disproved with a quick Google search (with results that aren't Wikipedia) or, better yet, involve incorrect math (which many/.ers can correct/verify without having to search Google), then it's not "opining" anything.
"Yo momma is so fat she sits around the house" is likely non-factual, but it is not fact-checkable since we do not know who your mom is to even search for information. (If this is the basic premise of the post, I think the "overrated" mod still fits, but only if it's been rated up.) "Hillary Clinton is so fat she is incapable of sitting in a normal-sized chair with armrests" is non-factual and is easily fact-checkable with a quick search of any news site for recent images.
You forget, this plan is targeting rich Americans, who will then become rich Australians. I'm sure that the rich in Australia are just as capable of making laws not apply to them as they are in America.
In some states in the US, laws allow a left on red if given conditions are met. The conditions are some mix of hours (generally late night, when traffic is much less), ability to view oncoming traffic, and how long you've waited at the light.
Yup. Having lived in very rural areas of Iowa, the speed limit on dirt roads was "whatever your vehicle can do so long as you can see enough road to completely stop". After harvest season you can easily see a mile in all directions for many stretches, so the risk of something going onto the road (outside of small critters) was almost nil.
I wish my company's India group only had problems you describe. When we give them a simple task, like including a keyword in an e-mail subject so, they completely botch it up. Respond back with some odd error that would never happen if they followed even half the instructions, find out they were doing something completely different, and tell them to read the instructions again.
Honestly, I think about half of our local team's time is spent cleaning up after the India group's time. It would probably easier and cost the same, if not less, to replace the 20-odd people there with four or five half-competent people here; at least the language and time barriers would be (mostly) removed. But our owner isn't great about people management...
(My personal goal, as someone who writes and maintains all of our internal software, is to render the employees in India unnecessary.)
until politicians learn to trim their twitter and facebook timelines when they run for office
The internet never forgets. Even if they learn to purge/hide their stuff, it's extremely likely that it's referenced or stored somewhere else, especially if the person had some level of notoriety before running for office.
there is fuck all reasonable people can do about it.
I disagree. The way that you deal with one of those types of people, who I deem "assholes", is a simple idea that is hard for many people to do: Be an asshole in turn.
Assholes are not going to listen to reasonable people, to polite requests. Certainly try these first, but do not expect them to work and be ready to up the ante. See someone throw a cigarette butt on the ground? Ask them to pick it up. They refuse? Pick it up and stick it on them.
Nice people don't want to be assholes, of course. This is a good thing. But the only way to deal with people like this, from the guy who cuts in line to the fanatic priest that wants to legalize stoning adulterers, is to puff up your chest, boost up your voice, and lean right back into them. Asshole and evil people get away with a lot today (and in history) because reasonable people don't want to be assholes themselves. But reasonable people need to be willing and ready to be a calculated asshole, causing grief only to those who already cause grief, or those assholes will continue to shit all over us.
Maybe groups of friends should have a designated asshole. Like a designated driver, the designated asshole is the one who steps to the front when someone in the group is faced with regular assholes. Someone who can turn it on and off as needed.
I actually thought we were done with him. I was actively checking the names of posts in my RSS feed I thought sounded stupid and didn't see him on any, despite having no script for blocking. Damn.
These are "private" companies overreacting in (knee-jerk) response to an extremely low-hanging fruit, not the US government imposing it upon them. Where the government is talking about removing the flag, it's only where the flag is flying/hung on government property. NPR had a piece that talked a bit about flag-making companies that are not stopping production and expect their sales of the flag to jump by two magnitudes or more over the next few months.
It's a mad scramble to disconnect themselves from the flag in any way, trying to convince stupid people (the same ones who think a politician is unpatriotic if they don't wear a flag pin) that they don't support white supremacy, racism, or any related idea in any way, nevermind that they've never expressed such support in the past.
Once the furor dies down most of these things changes will silently be relaxed. At least, I hope so, because otherwise I agree with you.
I think I'll take my business of Tiger-Repelling Rocks to China. And I even have data! I have carried my own Tiger-Repelling Rock for over 2000 hours without any encounter with a tiger. To my knowledge, no one I have given--er, sold one to has encountered a tiger.
I'm sure I can find a priest who will bless my inventory as well, so people will be able to buy Holy Tiger-Repelling Rocks! Every person needs one, you never know when there will be a tiger!
Slashdot Mirror
They can hit price in one of two basic ways:
1) Lower their own costs
2) Their competition has to increase their own price across the board
It seems they're playing both sides on this one. They are trying to reduce their own costs, but by lobbying to at least maintain the current standards (if not tighten them), they force the competition to increase the cost of their R&D/vehicles to bring them more in line with Tesla's offerings.
Which usually stems from another first-world problem, homeless people.
If companies that provide auto insurance are smart and see the writing on the wall (I have to assume so, since they are entirely about risk/benefit analysis), they will gradually transform into a different kind of entity. While they'll still provide insurance, they'll turn into a "subscription" version of a car rental company: Customers with the proper plan can request a self-driving car for certain periods, and may even receive a discount for doing so over using their traditional vehicle.
As autonomous car adoption rates increase, these hybrid companies will move more towards being an "auto club", where people pay a monthly fee (likely comparable to the combined cost of a loan payment+insurance) and will be able to order up self-driving cars. Depending on their plan, it may only be with advance planning and an extra charge for on-demand, or it is unlimited on-demand. They use the vehicle as necessary, then send it back.
They might only get so much time to allow it to sit idle, so if they're going to spend a day at Disneyland they have a car that will bring them, send it away, and order another when they go home. In fact, such "clubs" will likely have garages right outside of amusement parks. After all, if your car can drive itself, and you don't need to leave anything in the vehicle, why bother with parking? You could send it home, or to a far-off lot. And if you're going to do that, why bother with owning a vehicle at all? You can avoid all the maintenance of ownership, the cost of having a garage, and registration fees by just using one of these clubs.
The companies will still offer insurance: there will always be people who want to own their own car, self-driving or not. But that will become a "side" business, and the remaining portions of existing businesses may be sold off until you have only a handful of national auto insurers. I doubt the companies that focus on consumers would sell insurance to car companies, as the car companies have their existing liability insurance that will just increase if/when there's added risk from autonomous cars.
In the US, bullying isn't a problem so much as it is a national past time. Americans love power, and people with power; one way to increase your own (apparent) power is to decrease the (apparent) power of your rival. And then people will vote for whoever they think has the most apparent power (so long as that person has the right capital letter next to their name on the ballot.)
We do a lot of things weird here. Blow a guy's head off during prime time television? What, you're telling me you only did it once? Do it five times, think of the advertising revenue! Oh, you want to include a scene that shows a woman's nipple for half a second during that same time frame? No, sorry, you have to go to jail now.
I think that America (and Americans) has an incredibly amount of potential, but it's significantly hampered by our weird mix of "morals" and in-fighting over issues which, relative to the country as a whole, are fairly irrelevant but get all the focus.
Who amongst the federal or his state government actually thinks he did something wrong and would want to charge him?
Yes, this is a bad idea. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs only to look at Detroit for why this is a bad idea.
Considering how many things are straight-up clones, especially in the Android market, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a handful of companies that pump out cheap (to develop), crap, copy+paste games and put this kind of stuff in them.
I am imagining a Drone-seeking Drone. Something larger and faster than the average "consumer" "drone", which ideally can capture a drone, bring to police, and they can impound it; or (if unable to catch it) has a tethered stun net it can use to shoot at, disable, and pull in the offending drone.
But it is an economical one.
Once self-driving cars have a track record proven to be at least as reliable as a human's (and likely not even then, probably when it's 50% more reliable) and the cost of such vehicles has dropped to a middle income range, insurance policies will start favoring them. Self-driving cars will cost them far less (so long as the self-driving car records actions taken in manual mode, if one is provided), so the rates for manual-only vehicles will increase quickly. The rich will be able to afford them, but it might come to the point where insurance costs more per month than the vehicle covered. Insurance rates will force wide adoption of self-driving vehicles. (I also think that insurance companies will become, at least in part, a car rental-like place where the insured can summon a self-driving vehicle and use it for a limited time as part of their package.)
I expect that existing manual-only vehicles would be grandfathered in so as not to create a huge onus on the poor/lower class (likely forced through government regulation). Probably also less for those living in the country/rural areas, where self-driving cars might have less reliability.
I believe the quote goes:
Advanced technology can be incredibly hard for all but a small group to understand, hence magic. Magic that can be routinely, consistently applied at a basic level is understandable by most, hence technology.
While the reasonable forces behind increased gender parity in tech/gaming are dwindling, I don't think "Social Justice Warriors" are going to go away anytime soon. But, as you say, there is actual social injustice in America and the world over. Those who actually work towards equality will unfortunately get lumped in with that label.
I would like to propose a new term for such a group, those who use "social justice" as a battering ram to force others into submission, get attention, or otherwise cause unnecessary problems: Totalitarian Imperative for Equality (or TIE, for short.)
Nice to see that blurb of text again. Can we get this to happen every time you post a Nerval's Lobster/Dice slashvertisement, too?
I read (some of) a sociology paper that looked at violence in legalized prostitution. One of the things that struck me as odd was the explicit declaration that STD transmission, whether intentional or not, was investigated as a form of "violence". While getting an STD is a real concern for that industry, and not a good thing in any way, I think that labeling it as "violence" does a huge disservice to those who suffer actual violence. It's not that much of a stretch, I suppose, as harm is actually inflicted, but then you could define a pop fly ball hitting a fan on the head as violence, or parking in a handicap-only spot and forcing someone who actually is handicap to park farther away (a douche move, but not violence.)
So the staff at Reddit don't even need "subs which we don't like", they can just start labeling things they find uncomfortable as a definition of "violence".
I've always thought that an almagamation of the generic up/down (shown as Ars Technica does, where you see cumulative, total up, and total down) and Slashdot's karma system would be best. The up/down would show the overall approval or disapproval of a comment, but the Karma moderation is what hides it or brings it to the front. Thus you can understand the overall community's feelings (if that matters to you) but still have unpopular-yet-interesting posts rise. Up/down would not affect a user's Karma in any way.
This might have the extra benefit of making people use Offtopic/Troll for their actual purpose, rather than using them as "-1, Dislike". Won't stop that completely, but giving them a more representative outlet would likely lower such antics.
Read his comment again:
That is, if multiple "facts" given in a comment can be easily disproved with a quick Google search (with results that aren't Wikipedia) or, better yet, involve incorrect math (which many /.ers can correct/verify without having to search Google), then it's not "opining" anything.
"Yo momma is so fat she sits around the house" is likely non-factual, but it is not fact-checkable since we do not know who your mom is to even search for information. (If this is the basic premise of the post, I think the "overrated" mod still fits, but only if it's been rated up.) "Hillary Clinton is so fat she is incapable of sitting in a normal-sized chair with armrests" is non-factual and is easily fact-checkable with a quick search of any news site for recent images.
You forget, this plan is targeting rich Americans, who will then become rich Australians. I'm sure that the rich in Australia are just as capable of making laws not apply to them as they are in America.
In some states in the US, laws allow a left on red if given conditions are met. The conditions are some mix of hours (generally late night, when traffic is much less), ability to view oncoming traffic, and how long you've waited at the light.
Yup. Having lived in very rural areas of Iowa, the speed limit on dirt roads was "whatever your vehicle can do so long as you can see enough road to completely stop". After harvest season you can easily see a mile in all directions for many stretches, so the risk of something going onto the road (outside of small critters) was almost nil.
I wish my company's India group only had problems you describe. When we give them a simple task, like including a keyword in an e-mail subject so, they completely botch it up. Respond back with some odd error that would never happen if they followed even half the instructions, find out they were doing something completely different, and tell them to read the instructions again.
Honestly, I think about half of our local team's time is spent cleaning up after the India group's time. It would probably easier and cost the same, if not less, to replace the 20-odd people there with four or five half-competent people here; at least the language and time barriers would be (mostly) removed. But our owner isn't great about people management...
(My personal goal, as someone who writes and maintains all of our internal software, is to render the employees in India unnecessary.)
Are you talking about the telescope protestors, or Congressional Republicans?
The internet never forgets. Even if they learn to purge/hide their stuff, it's extremely likely that it's referenced or stored somewhere else, especially if the person had some level of notoriety before running for office.
I disagree. The way that you deal with one of those types of people, who I deem "assholes", is a simple idea that is hard for many people to do: Be an asshole in turn.
Assholes are not going to listen to reasonable people, to polite requests. Certainly try these first, but do not expect them to work and be ready to up the ante. See someone throw a cigarette butt on the ground? Ask them to pick it up. They refuse? Pick it up and stick it on them.
Nice people don't want to be assholes, of course. This is a good thing. But the only way to deal with people like this, from the guy who cuts in line to the fanatic priest that wants to legalize stoning adulterers, is to puff up your chest, boost up your voice, and lean right back into them. Asshole and evil people get away with a lot today (and in history) because reasonable people don't want to be assholes themselves. But reasonable people need to be willing and ready to be a calculated asshole, causing grief only to those who already cause grief, or those assholes will continue to shit all over us.
Maybe groups of friends should have a designated asshole. Like a designated driver, the designated asshole is the one who steps to the front when someone in the group is faced with regular assholes. Someone who can turn it on and off as needed.
I actually thought we were done with him. I was actively checking the names of posts in my RSS feed I thought sounded stupid and didn't see him on any, despite having no script for blocking. Damn.
These are "private" companies overreacting in (knee-jerk) response to an extremely low-hanging fruit, not the US government imposing it upon them. Where the government is talking about removing the flag, it's only where the flag is flying/hung on government property. NPR had a piece that talked a bit about flag-making companies that are not stopping production and expect their sales of the flag to jump by two magnitudes or more over the next few months.
It's a mad scramble to disconnect themselves from the flag in any way, trying to convince stupid people (the same ones who think a politician is unpatriotic if they don't wear a flag pin) that they don't support white supremacy, racism, or any related idea in any way, nevermind that they've never expressed such support in the past.
Once the furor dies down most of these things changes will silently be relaxed. At least, I hope so, because otherwise I agree with you.
I think I'll take my business of Tiger-Repelling Rocks to China. And I even have data! I have carried my own Tiger-Repelling Rock for over 2000 hours without any encounter with a tiger. To my knowledge, no one I have given--er, sold one to has encountered a tiger.
I'm sure I can find a priest who will bless my inventory as well, so people will be able to buy Holy Tiger-Repelling Rocks! Every person needs one, you never know when there will be a tiger!