If, to take one example, China decided tomorrow to cripple the US they could simply stop allowing products manufactured on their soil being exported to the US.
... and immediately be dealing with 50 million unemployed people and a great depression as the Chinese economy implodes by 26%.
China depends on exports far more than America depends on imports.
Perhaps not shipping our manufacturing base overseas.
How do you accomplish that? Make it illegal to export machinery and equipment? Scan emails to foreigners, to ensure they don't have any blueprints or designs? Make it illegal for smart people to travel abroad?
In the 1990s, we banned the transfer of cryptographic technology. Today, this is widely viewed as a disastrous policy. Since companies could not export crypto software written in America, they did all their crypto development elsewhere, so America lost both jobs and expertise, the exact opposite of the law's intention.
Throughout history, many many nations have attempted to restrict the free movement of people, capital, and ideas. Can you cite any examples of this ever working well?
In the last 50 years, America has been in over a dozen wars and military interventions. China has been in one.
The murder rate in China is one sixth of America's rate.
Perhaps you mean "official" violence against their own people? America "wins" there too, by arresting and imprisoning more than 4 times as many people per capita.
There is no secret to making "cola" and in blind taste tests, people do NOT prefer CocaCola to other brands. In fact, most people prefer the sweeter taste of Pepsi. The only advantage that CocaCola has is their brand. The Chinese did not learn to make cola by "stealing" Coke's "secret recipe".
Effects of microgravity on living things (mice, humans, flies, plants), space navigation, orbital micro-debris, space manufacturing, atmospheric analysis, life support systems, LEO radiation exposure, communications testing, sensor testing, orbital crystal/bacteria/nanomaterials research, and the list goes on for a while.
Most of that is rehashing of what was done on Skylab or Mir decades ago. Much of the rest could be done with robotics at FAR lower cost than a permanent manned station.
its also FAR from the worst (see the F-35 program if you want a really good example)
So the ISS is justified because we spend money on other things that are even stupider?
I generally agree with what you wrote, but not this. A sample size of 4000 people is PLENTY. There are a lot of things you can do to make surveys and polls more accurate, like ensuring the respondents are representative of the population, and asking unbiased questions, but "asking more people" makes very little difference.
Asking a few dozen people would have got them within 5% of the "real" answer, and a few hundred would have an error of less than 1%. So asking 4000 people is way overkill. The problems with this survey lay elsewhere.
The vast bulk of humanity is, in the words of Citizen Ted, "a worthless morass of lying, defecating chimpanzees".
My experience is that the vast bulk of humanity are decent people. We shouldn't let a the bottom 10% ruin everything just because they shout the loudest. Slashdot accomplishes that with the moderation system, which can be abused but mostly works well.
What precisely should Google do about this?
I think the best solution is to disable autocomplete for racial and religious terms. That is a neutral approach, and doesn't need constant monitoring.
If they are developing AI that will replace us all, that's enough.
That is a good long term solution. But until Humanity 2.0 is out of beta, we still need to deal with the world as it is.
It's interesting that my question was modded down. Who was afraid of my question?
I am afraid. I don't think you should have been modded down since you raise an interesting point, but I fear that we sometimes go too far in censoring uncomfortable truths. In this case, maybe Google should take action. But we need to be careful. If they censor results for "Jews are...", a precedent will be set, and they will soon come under pressure to also censor results for "Republicans are...."
We now have market full of $500+ smartphones loaded with features no one asked for.
There are plenty of phones without those features. If people didn't want the new features they wouldn't be paying $500 to get them. They would be buying $20 flip phones at Walmart. Or, if they want more than that, an iPhone refurb for $150.
Other sources, such as this article report far lower amounts of lithium: Tesla's Model S 85 KWH battery is made with thousands of small batteries or cells and would have about 6.8 Kg of lithium. . That would cost about $500 for the lithium.
I'm pretty sure insurance on deliveries covers any financial burden these supposed thieves are incurring.
Insurance doesn't reduce costs. It just spreads the cost out, and then tacks on the administrative costs and profit for the insurance company, thus increasing the cost.
Insurance on routine expenses like inventory shrinkage is foolish. In the long run, it costs more than it saves.
And if they can't even secure hardware before it even hits store shelves, they have a much larger (and different) problem.
It is a problem for everyone that sells small valuable things. So who pays for "shrinkage"? You do. The cost of theft is built into the price of everything you buy.
This would be a good use for the Qattara Depression. It is 133 m below sea level (twice as deep as Death Valley), and only 50 km of relatively flat ground from the Mediterranean Sea. As an extra bonus, the Med is already significantly saltier than the Atlantic or Pacific.
We invaded Iraq for their oil, now we can invade Egypt for their salt.
A Tesla battery contains about 60 kg of lithium, which comes from about 320 kg of lithium carbonate. At $12k per ton, that costs about $4k, which is only 5% of the cost of the car.
Bring on the Molten salt grid storage batteries instead of wasting the Lithium there.
I never understood the appeal of lithium for grid storage, since weight of a stationary battery is not an issue.
If all your customers demand take-out, and you lose money on each take-out meal, you still go bankrupt.
The restaurants don't "lose money on each take-out meal".
Businesses have variable costs, such as the ingredients and labor going into each order. They also have fixed costs, such as rent. The takeout orders generate more income than the variable costs, so they add to the total profit. But the problem is that they don't contribute enough profit to pay the rent at the end of the month.
If your customers switch from eat-in to takeout, you may go bankrupt unless you can cut costs, but if you refuse those orders, you will go bankrupt even faster.
Slashdot Mirror
40,000,000 miles is quite far
Not really. 40M miles won't even get you to Mars.
And we don't usually pay people to come here (unless they're from Slovakia).
She's Slovenian, not Slovak.
Slovenia is a former part of Yugoslavia, and lies between Italy and Croatia.
Slovakia was the eastern half of Czechoslovakia, and lies between Poland and Hungary.
If, to take one example, China decided tomorrow to cripple the US they could simply stop allowing products manufactured on their soil being exported to the US.
... and immediately be dealing with 50 million unemployed people and a great depression as the Chinese economy implodes by 26%.
China depends on exports far more than America depends on imports.
Of course the use of paper is terrible for the environment
Only if it is recycled. If paper is dumped into landfills, thus sequestering the carbon, it is a great way to mitigate AGW.
Perhaps not shipping our manufacturing base overseas.
How do you accomplish that?
Make it illegal to export machinery and equipment?
Scan emails to foreigners, to ensure they don't have any blueprints or designs?
Make it illegal for smart people to travel abroad?
In the 1990s, we banned the transfer of cryptographic technology. Today, this is widely viewed as a disastrous policy. Since companies could not export crypto software written in America, they did all their crypto development elsewhere, so America lost both jobs and expertise, the exact opposite of the law's intention.
Throughout history, many many nations have attempted to restrict the free movement of people, capital, and ideas. Can you cite any examples of this ever working well?
Seriosly.. who wants this Alexa shite?
Plenty of people want it. More than 25 million devices have been sold so far.
Nice. A vi vs. emacs flame war in 2018.
We should compromise, and just run a vi emulator inside emacs.
They are a backward and violent people
In the last 50 years, America has been in over a dozen wars and military interventions. China has been in one.
The murder rate in China is one sixth of America's rate.
Perhaps you mean "official" violence against their own people? America "wins" there too, by arresting and imprisoning more than 4 times as many people per capita.
So who is more violent?
There is no secret to making "cola" and in blind taste tests, people do NOT prefer CocaCola to other brands. In fact, most people prefer the sweeter taste of Pepsi. The only advantage that CocaCola has is their brand. The Chinese did not learn to make cola by "stealing" Coke's "secret recipe".
What should we have done instead? Built a wall around America to keep ideas from leaking out?
Well if you looked at the pooling,
Polls have systematic biases. For instance, Democrats are more willing to participate in polls.
Effects of microgravity on living things (mice, humans, flies, plants), space navigation, orbital micro-debris, space manufacturing, atmospheric analysis, life support systems, LEO radiation exposure, communications testing, sensor testing, orbital crystal/bacteria/nanomaterials research, and the list goes on for a while.
Most of that is rehashing of what was done on Skylab or Mir decades ago. Much of the rest could be done with robotics at FAR lower cost than a permanent manned station.
its also FAR from the worst (see the F-35 program if you want a really good example)
So the ISS is justified because we spend money on other things that are even stupider?
Only 4000 of them.
I generally agree with what you wrote, but not this. A sample size of 4000 people is PLENTY. There are a lot of things you can do to make surveys and polls more accurate, like ensuring the respondents are representative of the population, and asking unbiased questions, but "asking more people" makes very little difference.
Asking a few dozen people would have got them within 5% of the "real" answer, and a few hundred would have an error of less than 1%. So asking 4000 people is way overkill. The problems with this survey lay elsewhere.
Donald Knuth is still an active coder at age 80, and started programming in the late 1950s.
The vast bulk of humanity is, in the words of Citizen Ted, "a worthless morass of lying, defecating chimpanzees".
My experience is that the vast bulk of humanity are decent people. We shouldn't let a the bottom 10% ruin everything just because they shout the loudest. Slashdot accomplishes that with the moderation system, which can be abused but mostly works well.
What precisely should Google do about this?
I think the best solution is to disable autocomplete for racial and religious terms. That is a neutral approach, and doesn't need constant monitoring.
If they are developing AI that will replace us all, that's enough.
That is a good long term solution. But until Humanity 2.0 is out of beta, we still need to deal with the world as it is.
It's interesting that my question was modded down. Who was afraid of my question?
I am afraid. I don't think you should have been modded down since you raise an interesting point, but I fear that we sometimes go too far in censoring uncomfortable truths. In this case, maybe Google should take action. But we need to be careful. If they censor results for "Jews are ...", a precedent will be set, and they will soon come under pressure to also censor results for "Republicans are ...."
We now have market full of $500+ smartphones loaded with features no one asked for.
There are plenty of phones without those features. If people didn't want the new features they wouldn't be paying $500 to get them. They would be buying $20 flip phones at Walmart. Or, if they want more than that, an iPhone refurb for $150.
Do you have any concept of how much 100 billion dollars is?
Just because the ISS cost $100B to build doesn't mean it is worth that much.
It's value today is much closer to this amount: $0.
Other sources, such as this article report far lower amounts of lithium: Tesla's Model S 85 KWH battery is made with thousands of small batteries or cells and would have about 6.8 Kg of lithium. . That would cost about $500 for the lithium.
I'm pretty sure insurance on deliveries covers any financial burden these supposed thieves are incurring.
Insurance doesn't reduce costs. It just spreads the cost out, and then tacks on the administrative costs and profit for the insurance company, thus increasing the cost.
Insurance on routine expenses like inventory shrinkage is foolish. In the long run, it costs more than it saves.
And if they can't even secure hardware before it even hits store shelves, they have a much larger (and different) problem.
It is a problem for everyone that sells small valuable things. So who pays for "shrinkage"? You do. The cost of theft is built into the price of everything you buy.
Where's the story about cobalt production? That's a bigger bottleneck than lithium.
There are alternatives to cobalt, such as manganese, which is plentiful. There is no substitute for lithium.
This would be a good use for the Qattara Depression. It is 133 m below sea level (twice as deep as Death Valley), and only 50 km of relatively flat ground from the Mediterranean Sea. As an extra bonus, the Med is already significantly saltier than the Atlantic or Pacific.
We invaded Iraq for their oil, now we can invade Egypt for their salt.
So much for cheap batteries.
A Tesla battery contains about 60 kg of lithium, which comes from about 320 kg of lithium carbonate. At $12k per ton, that costs about $4k, which is only 5% of the cost of the car.
Bring on the Molten salt grid storage batteries instead of wasting the Lithium there.
I never understood the appeal of lithium for grid storage, since weight of a stationary battery is not an issue.
If all your customers demand take-out, and you lose money on each take-out meal, you still go bankrupt.
The restaurants don't "lose money on each take-out meal".
Businesses have variable costs, such as the ingredients and labor going into each order. They also have fixed costs, such as rent. The takeout orders generate more income than the variable costs, so they add to the total profit. But the problem is that they don't contribute enough profit to pay the rent at the end of the month.
If your customers switch from eat-in to takeout, you may go bankrupt unless you can cut costs, but if you refuse those orders, you will go bankrupt even faster.