Corruption happens primarily in secret and between the most powerful and wealthy.
Actually, most corruption in America happens openly and is completely legal. There are essentially no legal limits on how much money lobbyists and special interest groups can funnel to a politician, nor is there much incentive for the politician to refuse their offers.
In China, the number of malnourished children is negligible. They are welcoming to foreign investment, and have done it without "eroding the country's autonomy".
30 years ago, China and India chose dramatically different paths. It is now obvious which turned the wrong direction. Economic isolation doesn't work.
It's about money. More specifically, it's about money flowing (or not flowing) into the pockets of the politicians.
It is more than that. India has a deep anti-business culture and a knee jerk mistrust of foreign companies. This is worse in eastern India. Good luck getting anything done in Bengal. But even in western cities like Mumbai, or Tamil areas like Chennai, there is roadblock after roadblock.
Even the political corruption is dysfunctional. In China, you can use the guanxi system to bribe one bureaucrat, and then they will clear the path for your project. But in India, the bribee will just take your money and step aside to let you deal with the next guy with his hand out. They feel no obligation to help you or champion your project.
30 years ago, China and India were about even on GDP per capita. Today, China is ahead by a factor of four. There are reasons for that.
If you need manufacturing expertise, go to China. If you need cheap labor, go to Bangladesh. If you need English speakers for your call center, the Philippines is welcoming. India has no competitive advantage in any of these areas.
If you open the door for censorship because something is "obviously" fake news, evil, misleading, or whatever, then don't be surprised if your own views are censored in the future.
How about if we just let everyone speak, and let the listeners decide for themselves who to believe? Freedom of speech isn't perfect, but it is better than the alternative.
Facebook should not be the arbiter of what is "true".
Haha actually anti vaxxers are left wingers who don't watch Faux News
The anti-vax movement is not politically polarized. Instead, it attracts kooks from both the right and left. It is associated with political extremism regardless of direction. Left-wingnuts see vaccines as a corporate conspiracy. Right-wingnuts see vaccines as a government conspiracy. Moderates on both the left and right vaccinate their kids.
Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?
They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.
they'd just raise the price on their products and services by an appropriate amount
Not true. If they could charge higher prices, they would already be doing it.
An income tax increase would only raise prices if it applied to their competitors as well. Few of Amazon's competitors are paying 0%.
until their profit margins were once again where they wanted them to be.
They want them to be at infinity. Companies aim to maximize profits. They don't settle for a level that is "fair" or "good enough".
Taxes are expense items.
Income taxes are not an expense, because they are not part of COGS. VAT and excise taxes, and other taxes on revenue are expenses, but taxes on profit are not.
When corporations pay taxes, the cost is passed on to some combination of shareholders (lower dividends or less capital investment), customers (higher prices), and employees (lower wages).
It would be better to just eliminate corporate taxes, and tax these groups directly. If you think employees should pay more, then increase payroll taxes. If you think customers should pay more, then increase sales taxes.
If you think shareholders should pay more, which is where most people think the burden should fall, then indirectly taxing the corporation is a terrible way to achieve that. It means the stocks in grandma's pension fund are taxed exactly the same as a billionaire's holdings. I would make more sense to tax dividends or capital gains only once at the individual level, so grandma pays at the low income rate, while the billionaire pays a higher marginal rate.
Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join?
Sure. I would like a SM site that provides a simple forum for group discussions with friends, families, and interest groups, without all the noise and distractions.
But Minds.com doesn't sound like that. Their point system encourages "activity" (quantity over quality) including reposts, voting, sharing links, etc. The very things that have turned Facebook into a cesspool. There will soon be bots auto-posting crap to build up points.
It looks like they used Facebook as a baseline, and figured out a way to make it worse.
The problem is that the customer makes the decision on which card to use, but the merchant pays the fee, and is banned from passing the fee onto the customer. So Visa and MC have no incentive to lower fees, since there is no incentive for the decision maker to care.
The solution is to ban the ban. Merchants should be able to pass on the fee. If customers can see that Visa costs them an extra 3% on their bill, while AmEx costs them 4%, that will be the end of AmEx. It will also open up competition for lower rates from alternative payment systems. Discover Card had lower rates, but it never caught on because the lower rates didn't actually benefit the customer.
This is similar to healthcare. The insurance company pays, not the patient, so the person making the decision has no incentive to care about the cost. The obvious result is spiraling prices.
If the overall risk is lower than using alternative herbicides, then yes.
Glyphosate is a very effective herbicide that increases crop yields, is safer to handle than the broad spectrum herbicides it replaced, and enables no-till farming methods that reduce soil erosion and increase soil carbon retention.
We need to develop better equipment and techniques to handle it properly, and educate farmers on those techniques. But glyphosate is unlikely to be discontinued.
Every week there are conflicting articles appearing about this subject on these pages
No there aren't. Researchers have consistently failed to find any causative relationship between video games and violence. We have seen article after article, all saying basically the same thing.
Those claiming video games cause violence are politicians and publicity seekers, not scientists.
I'm wondering where all the "correlation isn't causation" posts are.
The correlation is in the other direction. Video games first became popular in the 1990s, and were correlated with a dramatic decline in violent crime. Part of this was likely from other factors, such as a reduction in blood lead levels, and demographic changes (fewer people in the prime-crime age group), but it is also likely that video games helped keep kids at home in their mom's basement instead of out on the street getting in trouble.
Even today, violent crime is more common among low income teenagers, who have the least access to video games.
None of this proves causation, but the correlation is "more video games" <=> "less violence".
The picture itself isn't "horrifying", it's the fact that the picture (which as you say looks perfectly normal) isn't real.
I don't see anything "horrifying" about it. GANs are interesting and the results are sometimes impressive. But "horror"? No.
Also, the only thing "new" about this website is that the images are supposedly generated on-the-fly. The faces are not much different than published results for other face GANs. GANs have been around since 2014, and high quality face generators have been around since 2017.
Slashdot Mirror
American way: 1,000,000
It is not just America. 70% of the world uses commas as separators with a decimal point. We out number the dot-separators more than two-to-one.
Of the nine countries with nuclear weapons, seven use commas as separators. So if you want to fight this out, you are gonna lose.
Read the Chicago Tribune re alderman shenanigans, then we can talk
In America, a politician accepting a bribe is front page news.
In India, a politician refusing a bribe is front page news.
Not quite the same thing.
Corruption happens primarily in secret and between the most powerful and wealthy.
Actually, most corruption in America happens openly and is completely legal. There are essentially no legal limits on how much money lobbyists and special interest groups can funnel to a politician, nor is there much incentive for the politician to refuse their offers.
Smart. If you don't want outside entities are eroding your country's autonomy
44% of Indian children are malnourished. 72% of Indian infants are anemic.
So not so "smart".
Malnutrition in India
In China, the number of malnourished children is negligible. They are welcoming to foreign investment, and have done it without "eroding the country's autonomy".
30 years ago, China and India chose dramatically different paths. It is now obvious which turned the wrong direction. Economic isolation doesn't work.
Within two paragraphs the summary makes contradictory claims.
The claims are not contradictory.
1. India is the world's second biggest internet market (China is #1).
2. They aren't doing it with American tech.
Chinese smartphones are winning in India
How is that different than here in the US?
It is completely different. I have lived in America for more than 5 decades. Here is the number of times I have paid a bribe for anything, ever: 0.
It's about money. More specifically, it's about money flowing (or not flowing) into the pockets of the politicians.
It is more than that. India has a deep anti-business culture and a knee jerk mistrust of foreign companies. This is worse in eastern India. Good luck getting anything done in Bengal. But even in western cities like Mumbai, or Tamil areas like Chennai, there is roadblock after roadblock.
Even the political corruption is dysfunctional. In China, you can use the guanxi system to bribe one bureaucrat, and then they will clear the path for your project. But in India, the bribee will just take your money and step aside to let you deal with the next guy with his hand out. They feel no obligation to help you or champion your project.
30 years ago, China and India were about even on GDP per capita. Today, China is ahead by a factor of four. There are reasons for that.
If you need manufacturing expertise, go to China. If you need cheap labor, go to Bangladesh. If you need English speakers for your call center, the Philippines is welcoming. India has no competitive advantage in any of these areas.
My guess is it will be a privately funded endeavor.
I hope so. I strongly object to my tax dollars being spent on this boondoggle.
There's international laws against any nation claiming dominion over any portion of outer space.
This international laws is the Moon Treaty.
The United States is not a signatory. Neither is China.
the minimum size of a breeding population to avoid inbreeding problems is about 10,000.
Just take along some frozen sperm and ovum.
Or just take a thumb drive with the compressed diffs of a few million human genomes, and some CRISPR/CAS9 to splice it in.
If you open the door for censorship because something is "obviously" fake news, evil, misleading, or whatever, then don't be surprised if your own views are censored in the future.
How about if we just let everyone speak, and let the listeners decide for themselves who to believe? Freedom of speech isn't perfect, but it is better than the alternative.
Facebook should not be the arbiter of what is "true".
Haha actually anti vaxxers are left wingers who don't watch Faux News
The anti-vax movement is not politically polarized. Instead, it attracts kooks from both the right and left. It is associated with political extremism regardless of direction. Left-wingnuts see vaccines as a corporate conspiracy. Right-wingnuts see vaccines as a government conspiracy. Moderates on both the left and right vaccinate their kids.
Did anyone review the actual coursework to determine which set of professors were grading more fairly?
They could have both graded fairly. According to the summary, the students felt less motivated and didn't work as hard in the "fixed-mindset" classes. So they may have gotten worse grades because they failed to learn as much and actually deserved worse grades.
they'd just raise the price on their products and services by an appropriate amount
Not true. If they could charge higher prices, they would already be doing it.
An income tax increase would only raise prices if it applied to their competitors as well. Few of Amazon's competitors are paying 0%.
until their profit margins were once again where they wanted them to be.
They want them to be at infinity. Companies aim to maximize profits. They don't settle for a level that is "fair" or "good enough".
Taxes are expense items.
Income taxes are not an expense, because they are not part of COGS. VAT and excise taxes, and other taxes on revenue are expenses, but taxes on profit are not.
When corporations pay taxes, the cost is passed on to some combination of shareholders (lower dividends or less capital investment), customers (higher prices), and employees (lower wages).
It would be better to just eliminate corporate taxes, and tax these groups directly. If you think employees should pay more, then increase payroll taxes. If you think customers should pay more, then increase sales taxes.
If you think shareholders should pay more, which is where most people think the burden should fall, then indirectly taxing the corporation is a terrible way to achieve that. It means the stocks in grandma's pension fund are taxed exactly the same as a billionaire's holdings. I would make more sense to tax dividends or capital gains only once at the individual level, so grandma pays at the low income rate, while the billionaire pays a higher marginal rate.
Is anybody here really looking for a new social media site to join?
Sure. I would like a SM site that provides a simple forum for group discussions with friends, families, and interest groups, without all the noise and distractions.
But Minds.com doesn't sound like that. Their point system encourages "activity" (quantity over quality) including reposts, voting, sharing links, etc. The very things that have turned Facebook into a cesspool. There will soon be bots auto-posting crap to build up points.
It looks like they used Facebook as a baseline, and figured out a way to make it worse.
or remove arbitrary size limits and give people enough room to actually explain in depth what they wanted to say.
Then it would no longer be Twitter. It would be Facebook.
If you go to Facebook, you can see how well the absence of arbitrary limits leads to deep and thoughtful discussion.
The problem is that the customer makes the decision on which card to use, but the merchant pays the fee, and is banned from passing the fee onto the customer. So Visa and MC have no incentive to lower fees, since there is no incentive for the decision maker to care.
The solution is to ban the ban. Merchants should be able to pass on the fee. If customers can see that Visa costs them an extra 3% on their bill, while AmEx costs them 4%, that will be the end of AmEx. It will also open up competition for lower rates from alternative payment systems. Discover Card had lower rates, but it never caught on because the lower rates didn't actually benefit the customer.
This is similar to healthcare. The insurance company pays, not the patient, so the person making the decision has no incentive to care about the cost. The obvious result is spiraling prices.
... to discredit the now-generic product in favor of a newer, still-patented alternative.
There is no newer still-patented alternative.
Is it ok if Monsanto is only poisoning farmers?
If the overall risk is lower than using alternative herbicides, then yes.
Glyphosate is a very effective herbicide that increases crop yields, is safer to handle than the broad spectrum herbicides it replaced, and enables no-till farming methods that reduce soil erosion and increase soil carbon retention.
We need to develop better equipment and techniques to handle it properly, and educate farmers on those techniques. But glyphosate is unlikely to be discontinued.
Another hypothesis with supporting evidence is that leaded gasonline was responsible
That does not explain why the decline happened earlier and deeper in NYC.
The switch to unleaded gasoline happened nationwide.
Every week there are conflicting articles appearing about this subject on these pages
No there aren't. Researchers have consistently failed to find any causative relationship between video games and violence. We have seen article after article, all saying basically the same thing.
Those claiming video games cause violence are politicians and publicity seekers, not scientists.
I'm wondering where all the "correlation isn't causation" posts are.
The correlation is in the other direction. Video games first became popular in the 1990s, and were correlated with a dramatic decline in violent crime. Part of this was likely from other factors, such as a reduction in blood lead levels, and demographic changes (fewer people in the prime-crime age group), but it is also likely that video games helped keep kids at home in their mom's basement instead of out on the street getting in trouble.
Even today, violent crime is more common among low income teenagers, who have the least access to video games.
None of this proves causation, but the correlation is "more video games" <=> "less violence".
... , let it finish it, edit it a bit and have it continue from there.
Actually, edit it a lot. From the snippets provided in TFA, there is no way this thing would pass a Turing Test. It is just well structured gibberish.
If OpenAI wants us to believe they are really doing edgy and dangerous stuff, they need to provide better evidence than this.
The picture itself isn't "horrifying", it's the fact that the picture (which as you say looks perfectly normal) isn't real.
I don't see anything "horrifying" about it. GANs are interesting and the results are sometimes impressive. But "horror"? No.
Also, the only thing "new" about this website is that the images are supposedly generated on-the-fly. The faces are not much different than published results for other face GANs. GANs have been around since 2014, and high quality face generators have been around since 2017.
This subsidy was Governor Andrew Cuomo's baby. He was heavily invested in it.
He even offered to change his name from "Andrew" to "Amazon Cuomo".
Nobody on the planet is going to be less objective.
He has less credibility than a NYC Bowery bum to be making forecasts about it.
By quoting him, you are saying much more about your own judgement and gullibility than about the supposed benefits of the subsidy.