1) I did not say or mean 50,000 permanent jobs for a churning workforce. I said 50,000 jobs that last a year. As in after that year automation replaces them with a 15 man team and 1000 robots.
2) Second, 50,000 minimum wage jobs end up COSTING the city and state money, not giving it. A minimum wage job is about $15k a year. Two parents, family of 2 at that wage will pay on average less than $3,000 to the state and local taxes and it cost more than that per year to pay for their kids schooling, police, fire, roads, etc. You end up attracting people to the area that cost the state more than they earn.
These kind of deals always promise more than they put out. There is no such thing as a free lunch, the guy promising the moon is always lying.
Not how it works. The high paid guys set up homes outside of the city. Then they put 50,000 minimum wage jobs that last a year.
People talk about how ineffective government is? This is EXACTLY the kind of thing government does poorly.
If your tax incentive idea is worthwhile it should be a permanent part of your tax structure and available to all.
The only reason to limit it's availability (either for a set time or for a certain company/kind of business) is because it is a crappy idea that would bankrupt the government if used too much.
I wasn't dodging and dancing, I was trying to demonstrate the falsehood of the statement in the rticle that "new technology" doesn't solve the old problems."
That's not true. New tech does may have new problems, but it often solves the older ones. I am not saying we should ignore the problems (in fact I advise people to solve them - with technology).
We do have several institutions that attempt to anticipate new problems. One of them is called Science Fiction writers. Bad ones love to do "if this goes on" stories, good ones try to point out "hey, if we figure out how to do this, it might cause a problem."
For example, in 1968 Larry Niven started writing several stories pointed out the problems that might have happened once we started perfecting transplant surgery. We avoided the horrors in part by passing laws that prevented the sale of organs in 1984.
One of the reasons military gear is far more expensive is that it that they usually expect it to be hardened to stand up to some action. Ships get hit. They want it to still work even after a torpedo goes off.
Of course, this mass produced piece of plastic is cheaper and people are already familiar with it's use. The question is, will it shatter when the ship gets hit by a shock wave that does not kill the crew?
# 4 requires something to penetrate the tube almost EXACTLY where the pod is. The odds of that happening are very low. It's a meteor hitting the train while in motion, versus hitting the tracks.
Earthquake is almost certainly #2, breaking the tube at a spot where the pod is not.
In case #2, there would be an air pressure event, but note that by definition it blows the pod away from the break, back toward safety. And of course, the emergency brakes would auto-activate and they should be strong enough to protect it in this relatively common and easily planned for situation.
1) Extremely sudden stop but no blockage/hit (emergency brake deploys) = injuries but no death. I expect this to happen at least once every 10 years.
2) Something breaks the loop but doesn't touch the pod, brakes slow it down = no deaths, minimal damage, minor injuries. This might happen every 50 years.
3) Slow down and reserve oxygen fails = all die, no physical damage. This should never happen without really bad maintenance.
4) Something hits the pod at speed = all death. This would probably require a terrorist act. Unlikely, but not impossible
1) You personally not using technology is NOT resisting the spread of it. It still spreads. You can't resist the spread of technology. Even if you don't use it other people will, and this spreads it.
2) You can use the technology while refusing the stupid abuses. For example, despite the moronic statement, in the article you can have a phone and not answer it. I would even go so far as to call people that insist on answering it fools. All cell phones have answering machines and if it is important, they text. I would even go so far as to say that slowly, over time, people that are stupid enough to answer the phone at the wrong time will get themselves killed (car accidents for example).
3) The problem is not even the spread of technology, nor the social change that it brings. Certain technology makes certain abuses less likely and certain abuses more likely. The spread of machinery helped eliminate slavery (by reducing the need for low skilled work). The spread of the internet made cyber-bullying far more common. But this changes. Over time, new technology replaces the old ones and often solves the old problems (while creating new ones.) In other words, having new tech DOES solve the problems of old tech. If you resist it long enough, it goes away. Or better yet, YOU can solve the problem.
For example, perhaps someone will find a way to make cellphones with real secrecy. Maybe it will be TOR based, who knows. But it is totally possible if enough people demand it.
Over time, as I got better at various activities, I slowly realized the key to being the best. This applies to anything and anyone. Winning only means that that your competition wasn't up to snuff.
Want to know how to be the best dancer in the room? Take one hour long class and hang out with people that haven't.
How to be the best educated in the room? Teach elementary school.
It took me a while to realize this. At first I thought it was depressing. But over time I realized it is merely what it means to be the best. It's natural and you can't stop it, unless you are the G.O.A.T (Rest in Peace, Muhammand Ali).
When the second best baseball player in the world is winning, it means the very best is not on the field. When the Mayor is the most important person in the room, he wasn't invited to the Governor's Ball. When the Governor is the most important person in the room you know he's not in the White House.
Winning isn't important. Trying your very best and demonstrating real skill is what's important.
1) Sales. Click here to instantly buy this thing we are advertising. This is the most common and the most useless. You can measure it's effectiveness exactly, which is what makes them popular. But they are remarkably uneffective. If you want to buy it now, you google it. (Or just go to amazon/ebay/etsy directly)
2) Branding. Hey, remember our product? We still sell it. People in X group love us. We are cool. You want to be cool right? When you need product like ours, remember we are the COOL one. This is more common outside of the web, but still is found here too. Basically, most Superbowl commercials are doing this. Harder to measure effectiveness, but over the long term can make or kill your business.
3) Informative. Hey, did you know that our product is on sale/now fights gingervitas/ is the first cure for the common cold?
This is relatively rare, but if your product is good and fills a new need AND no one knows it, it can instantly make you successful. Best example is going on Shark Tank. That's half the reason why people go the show.
When you enter or leave most countries, they have the opportunity to take any phone or similar device and not return it for an unspecified amount of time. They are supposed to only do this for terrorism, but they routinely do it for other reasons.
People that leave the country for months at a time often are highly suspect. They have the cool stamps on their passport which ups the interest of various governments.
The easiest way to block this stupidity is to get a temporary phone for the duration. Forget about sim card, just get a cheap phone designed for your travel.
Sometimes they have sensitive jobs, and their employer does not want to risk the tech or the info on it. If you work for a law firm or other company that takes security seriously, they might even give you a separate phone just for your vacation, let alone a work trip.
Aren't bitcoins easily trackable? They are only anonymous if you mine them yourself or buy them from someone that mined them themselves.
Yes, it is too much trouble for your standard police department to track them. But national spy/anti-terrorist agencies like the USA, Russia, China are another story.
If you don't think the NSA/CIA/Homeland Security know exactly who North Korea is giving bitcoins too and who is giving them bitcoins, then, I have a Border Wall to sell you. Cheap. Free if you can get Mexico to pay for it.
Let me explain this in terms a child can understand.
Learning things gets exponentially harder. Think of it like climbing a cliff. When you move from a 10 ft cliff to a 20 ft cliff, and it takes you twice as long, it does NOT mean we are moving half as fast.
We are working on harder problems so it will take more work to figure them out. That does not mean we are running out of ideas, nor does it mean the ideas are smaller. It means we are applying the same size ideas to bigger problems.
For this reason, this article is entirely wrong. Our problems are increasing in size, but our problem solving resource (Scientists) are increasing at the same rate.
When you hire someone to write code, they have no idea how much profit you are going to make off of them. Same thing when you pay someone to cook/wait/do carpentry/be a reception/ or do 90% of other jobs.
But when you pay someone to be a salesperson they know EXACTLY how much income they generate. It's not that hard to estimate how much profit they are earning for the company. This puts them in the single best employee/employer bargaining position.
So bosses HAVE to give sales commissions. Otherwise all the good salespeople quit and move to the competition who is willing to do it.
Salespeople have the best leverage, so they get the best deal. In exchange they have to give up safety. It's single most capitalistic employee job.
You need a bit of education. Profit is something inside the capitalism system, and therefore by definition can not be the purpose of capitalism. That would be like saying the purpose of democracy is to have as many elections as possible. Highest profit is not the purpose of capitalism. Instead it is the carrot we use to convince people to do the work..
Capitalism is not a system set up to help the capitalist. There would be far better systems to do that (Mercantilism does that much better).
Capitalism is an economic system set up for the benefit of the society, not the individual capitalists. The benefit of capitalism over communism and mercantilism is that capitalism provides cheaper and better goods for society.
The fact that certain capitalists will get a higher profit/wealthy is at best a side benefit, and many people would consider it a detriment that we have to put up with in exchange for the benefits. (Certain capitalists end up wasting their money - like giving it to certain nameless politicians - when it could better spent feeding steaks to my dog.).
1) This isn't new. Creative people have been doing this since the discover of drugs. It's a common trope of the drugged out artist. Tech people have always had more in common with artists than businessmen, so it's no surprise that techs prefer the artistic drugs over the businessman's drug (cocaine).
2) It doesn't work the way people think it does. You are not more creative under the influence of drugs, you are actually less creative. But you stop asking yourself "Is this a good idea?" and just do it. It's basically brainstorming for one person. They also make you stop worrying about outside distractions (failure, your marriage, etc.)
Drugs do not add anything to your mental capacity. Anything you do under the influence is something you could have done anyway without it, as long as you did not let your own personal demons get in the way.
But some people are ruled by their personal demons, so they do better work on the drug than off. Sad really.
You are suggesting that we don't even call out the bad guys for fear of getting it wrong and making it worse? Would you refuse to name a criminal out of fear of putting an innocent person in jail?
That's stupid. I can see refusing to prosecute for fear of getting it wrong, but refusing to even call them out?
That's true cowardice.
Call them out, take reasonable steps to make sure you get it right, and the net affect will be positive.
Software limitations purely for the purpose of profit are evil. No if's, and's or butts.
The entire point of capitalism is to convince the manufacturer to provide the most product for the cheapest price.
Here we have a situation where the company can sell a better product for the same price but instead chooses to screw their customers. I understand the concept of variable pricing, the general idea is to convince each consumer to pay the most they are willing to pay for the same product.
But you are supposed to do this via overpriced addons, coupons, marketing and sales. Basically, you REWARD the customer, rather than punish them. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
What Tesla is doing is Mercantlism. Using a government provided monopoly (you can't legally replace the limiting software) to charge more money.
This is disgusting and Tesla should not get any credit at all for temporarily being non-disgusting during a crisis. Especially when they return to the old system after the crisis is over.
I used to think Tesla was getting screwed by Texas and other states. Now I think they deserve it.
But most importantly, the 'sails' are not strong enough to push the boat without other propulsion. Makes me wonder how effective they are.
A lot of weight and equipment to provide a week thrust. I'd like to see a comparison of thrust per watt on these things vs an electric airboat fan vs. a standard electric underwater propeller.
I am pretty sure that Harvard has previously told students not to cheat.
Doing it again is not useful. Try using tests (including testing conditions) that make it difficult to cheat, rather than yelling at people that do it.
Slashdot Mirror
1) I did not say or mean 50,000 permanent jobs for a churning workforce. I said 50,000 jobs that last a year. As in after that year automation replaces them with a 15 man team and 1000 robots.
2) Second, 50,000 minimum wage jobs end up COSTING the city and state money, not giving it. A minimum wage job is about $15k a year. Two parents, family of 2 at that wage will pay on average less than $3,000 to the state and local taxes and it cost more than that per year to pay for their kids schooling, police, fire, roads, etc. You end up attracting people to the area that cost the state more than they earn.
These kind of deals always promise more than they put out. There is no such thing as a free lunch, the guy promising the moon is always lying.
Not how it works. The high paid guys set up homes outside of the city. Then they put 50,000 minimum wage jobs that last a year.
People talk about how ineffective government is? This is EXACTLY the kind of thing government does poorly.
If your tax incentive idea is worthwhile it should be a permanent part of your tax structure and available to all.
The only reason to limit it's availability (either for a set time or for a certain company/kind of business) is because it is a crappy idea that would bankrupt the government if used too much.
I wasn't dodging and dancing, I was trying to demonstrate the falsehood of the statement in the rticle that "new technology" doesn't solve the old problems."
That's not true. New tech does may have new problems, but it often solves the older ones. I am not saying we should ignore the problems (in fact I advise people to solve them - with technology).
We do have several institutions that attempt to anticipate new problems. One of them is called Science Fiction writers. Bad ones love to do "if this goes on" stories, good ones try to point out "hey, if we figure out how to do this, it might cause a problem."
For example, in 1968 Larry Niven started writing several stories pointed out the problems that might have happened once we started perfecting transplant surgery. We avoided the horrors in part by passing laws that prevented the sale of organs in 1984.
Now we have the horrors of not enough organs.
One of the reasons military gear is far more expensive is that it that they usually expect it to be hardened to stand up to some action. Ships get hit. They want it to still work even after a torpedo goes off.
Of course, this mass produced piece of plastic is cheaper and people are already familiar with it's use. The question is, will it shatter when the ship gets hit by a shock wave that does not kill the crew?
# 4 requires something to penetrate the tube almost EXACTLY where the pod is. The odds of that happening are very low. It's a meteor hitting the train while in motion, versus hitting the tracks.
Earthquake is almost certainly #2, breaking the tube at a spot where the pod is not.
In case #2, there would be an air pressure event, but note that by definition it blows the pod away from the break, back toward safety. And of course, the emergency brakes would auto-activate and they should be strong enough to protect it in this relatively common and easily planned for situation.
In order of most likely
1) Extremely sudden stop but no blockage/hit (emergency brake deploys) = injuries but no death. I expect this to happen at least once every 10 years.
2) Something breaks the loop but doesn't touch the pod, brakes slow it down = no deaths, minimal damage, minor injuries. This might happen every 50 years.
3) Slow down and reserve oxygen fails = all die, no physical damage. This should never happen without really bad maintenance.
4) Something hits the pod at speed = all death. This would probably require a terrorist act. Unlikely, but not impossible
1) You personally not using technology is NOT resisting the spread of it. It still spreads. You can't resist the spread of technology. Even if you don't use it other people will, and this spreads it.
2) You can use the technology while refusing the stupid abuses. For example, despite the moronic statement, in the article you can have a phone and not answer it. I would even go so far as to call people that insist on answering it fools. All cell phones have answering machines and if it is important, they text. I would even go so far as to say that slowly, over time, people that are stupid enough to answer the phone at the wrong time will get themselves killed (car accidents for example).
3) The problem is not even the spread of technology, nor the social change that it brings. Certain technology makes certain abuses less likely and certain abuses more likely. The spread of machinery helped eliminate slavery (by reducing the need for low skilled work). The spread of the internet made cyber-bullying far more common. But this changes. Over time, new technology replaces the old ones and often solves the old problems (while creating new ones.) In other words, having new tech DOES solve the problems of old tech. If you resist it long enough, it goes away. Or better yet, YOU can solve the problem.
For example, perhaps someone will find a way to make cellphones with real secrecy. Maybe it will be TOR based, who knows. But it is totally possible if enough people demand it.
Stop crying about the problem and solve it.
Over time, as I got better at various activities, I slowly realized the key to being the best. This applies to anything and anyone. Winning only means that that your competition wasn't up to snuff.
Want to know how to be the best dancer in the room? Take one hour long class and hang out with people that haven't.
How to be the best educated in the room? Teach elementary school.
It took me a while to realize this. At first I thought it was depressing. But over time I realized it is merely what it means to be the best. It's natural and you can't stop it, unless you are the G.O.A.T (Rest in Peace, Muhammand Ali).
When the second best baseball player in the world is winning, it means the very best is not on the field. When the Mayor is the most important person in the room, he wasn't invited to the Governor's Ball. When the Governor is the most important person in the room you know he's not in the White House.
Winning isn't important. Trying your very best and demonstrating real skill is what's important.
The three ad types are:
1) Sales. Click here to instantly buy this thing we are advertising. This is the most common and the most useless. You can measure it's effectiveness exactly, which is what makes them popular. But they are remarkably uneffective. If you want to buy it now, you google it. (Or just go to amazon/ebay/etsy directly)
2) Branding. Hey, remember our product? We still sell it. People in X group love us. We are cool. You want to be cool right? When you need product like ours, remember we are the COOL one. This is more common outside of the web, but still is found here too. Basically, most Superbowl commercials are doing this. Harder to measure effectiveness, but over the long term can make or kill your business.
3) Informative. Hey, did you know that our product is on sale/now fights gingervitas/ is the first cure for the common cold?
This is relatively rare, but if your product is good and fills a new need AND no one knows it, it can instantly make you successful. Best example is going on Shark Tank. That's half the reason why people go the show.
You need to learn a basic skill: Comparison.
It's not "Are AIs capable of driving cars?" It's "Are AIs better than humans at driving cars."
It's not "Is the Death Penalty a deterrent?" It's "Is the Death Penalty a better deterrent than life in prison?"
It's not "Is this really worth it?" But instead "Is this more profitable than advertisements?"
And web ads are notoriously low value. So yes, this looks to be worth while.
Would not surprise me if it is some disease.
When you enter or leave most countries, they have the opportunity to take any phone or similar device and not return it for an unspecified amount of time. They are supposed to only do this for terrorism, but they routinely do it for other reasons.
People that leave the country for months at a time often are highly suspect. They have the cool stamps on their passport which ups the interest of various governments.
The easiest way to block this stupidity is to get a temporary phone for the duration. Forget about sim card, just get a cheap phone designed for your travel.
Sometimes they have sensitive jobs, and their employer does not want to risk the tech or the info on it. If you work for a law firm or other company that takes security seriously, they might even give you a separate phone just for your vacation, let alone a work trip.
Seems radically low. Some people go on foreign vacation for that long and don't use their phone.
One year would be reasonable.
If you don't use your phone for one year, you should have no expectation that the data is still there.
But two months = idiots that only looked at most common usage patterns.
Aren't bitcoins easily trackable? They are only anonymous if you mine them yourself or buy them from someone that mined them themselves.
Yes, it is too much trouble for your standard police department to track them. But national spy/anti-terrorist agencies like the USA, Russia, China are another story.
If you don't think the NSA/CIA/Homeland Security know exactly who North Korea is giving bitcoins too and who is giving them bitcoins, then, I have a Border Wall to sell you. Cheap. Free if you can get Mexico to pay for it.
Let me explain this in terms a child can understand.
Learning things gets exponentially harder. Think of it like climbing a cliff. When you move from a 10 ft cliff to a 20 ft cliff, and it takes you twice as long, it does NOT mean we are moving half as fast.
We are working on harder problems so it will take more work to figure them out. That does not mean we are running out of ideas, nor does it mean the ideas are smaller. It means we are applying the same size ideas to bigger problems.
Luckily for us, some of the ideas we have convert subsistence farmers into scientists. The number of scientists has grown at an exponential rate for hundreds of years ( look at this 1994 article, note the exponential y axis on the chart).,
For this reason, this article is entirely wrong. Our problems are increasing in size, but our problem solving resource (Scientists) are increasing at the same rate.
No problem.
When you hire someone to write code, they have no idea how much profit you are going to make off of them. Same thing when you pay someone to cook/wait/do carpentry/be a reception/ or do 90% of other jobs.
But when you pay someone to be a salesperson they know EXACTLY how much income they generate. It's not that hard to estimate how much profit they are earning for the company. This puts them in the single best employee/employer bargaining position.
So bosses HAVE to give sales commissions. Otherwise all the good salespeople quit and move to the competition who is willing to do it.
Salespeople have the best leverage, so they get the best deal. In exchange they have to give up safety. It's single most capitalistic employee job.
Poor argument.
Listen to the other side: { joke }
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
You need a bit of education. Profit is something inside the capitalism system, and therefore by definition can not be the purpose of capitalism. That would be like saying the purpose of democracy is to have as many elections as possible. Highest profit is not the purpose of capitalism. Instead it is the carrot we use to convince people to do the work..
Capitalism is not a system set up to help the capitalist. There would be far better systems to do that (Mercantilism does that much better).
Capitalism is an economic system set up for the benefit of the society, not the individual capitalists. The benefit of capitalism over communism and mercantilism is that capitalism provides cheaper and better goods for society.
The fact that certain capitalists will get a higher profit/wealthy is at best a side benefit, and many people would consider it a detriment that we have to put up with in exchange for the benefits. (Certain capitalists end up wasting their money - like giving it to certain nameless politicians - when it could better spent feeding steaks to my dog.).
1) This isn't new. Creative people have been doing this since the discover of drugs. It's a common trope of the drugged out artist. Tech people have always had more in common with artists than businessmen, so it's no surprise that techs prefer the artistic drugs over the businessman's drug (cocaine).
2) It doesn't work the way people think it does. You are not more creative under the influence of drugs, you are actually less creative. But you stop asking yourself "Is this a good idea?" and just do it. It's basically brainstorming for one person. They also make you stop worrying about outside distractions (failure, your marriage, etc.)
Drugs do not add anything to your mental capacity. Anything you do under the influence is something you could have done anyway without it, as long as you did not let your own personal demons get in the way.
But some people are ruled by their personal demons, so they do better work on the drug than off. Sad really.
You are suggesting that we don't even call out the bad guys for fear of getting it wrong and making it worse? Would you refuse to name a criminal out of fear of putting an innocent person in jail?
That's stupid. I can see refusing to prosecute for fear of getting it wrong, but refusing to even call them out?
That's true cowardice.
Call them out, take reasonable steps to make sure you get it right, and the net affect will be positive.
Software limitations purely for the purpose of profit are evil. No if's, and's or butts.
The entire point of capitalism is to convince the manufacturer to provide the most product for the cheapest price.
Here we have a situation where the company can sell a better product for the same price but instead chooses to screw their customers. I understand the concept of variable pricing, the general idea is to convince each consumer to pay the most they are willing to pay for the same product.
But you are supposed to do this via overpriced addons, coupons, marketing and sales. Basically, you REWARD the customer, rather than punish them. That's how capitalism is supposed to work.
What Tesla is doing is Mercantlism. Using a government provided monopoly (you can't legally replace the limiting software) to charge more money.
This is disgusting and Tesla should not get any credit at all for temporarily being non-disgusting during a crisis. Especially when they return to the old system after the crisis is over.
I used to think Tesla was getting screwed by Texas and other states. Now I think they deserve it.
Not true.
They can add a tag that says "Paid Russian Post" (or Paid Chinese) etc.
Say contested is very different than telling the source.
The FDA should investigate all claims of malfunctioning products and charge the company money for doing so.
Depending on self-policing is not reasonable for medical issues, anymore than it was for EPA regulations of diesel pollution.
They need to use electricity to spin.
But most importantly, the 'sails' are not strong enough to push the boat without other propulsion. Makes me wonder how effective they are.
A lot of weight and equipment to provide a week thrust. I'd like to see a comparison of thrust per watt on these things vs an electric airboat fan vs. a standard electric underwater propeller.
I am pretty sure that Harvard has previously told students not to cheat.
Doing it again is not useful. Try using tests (including testing conditions) that make it difficult to cheat, rather than yelling at people that do it.