Neither Sweden, nor Germany became prosperous prior to instituting a Leftist agenda.
Germany was the first country to implement modern state socialism, including healthcare, pensions, disability, and support for families with children, beginning in 1883 under the guidance of that bleeding heart liberal Chancellor Otto von Bismark. At the time, German per capita income was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
By European standards, Germany is economically conservative. But compared to America, Germany is "leftist". Like most people, Americans use themselves as the reference point. Plenty of Americans believe their own government to be leftist.
I also blame outside negative interference, it always makes things worse, and radicalizes society at all levels.
Who interfered? There are Cubans in Venezuela, but they were invited in, and aren't in control. Venezuela has bad relations with Colombia, but that is because of Chavez interfering in Colombia by supporting the FARC. Both Chavez and Maduro have blamed their problems on American interference, but that is mostly fabrication. Venezuela was kicked out of Mercosur, but their economy was already in the toilet when that finally happened.
I don't think anyone is happy about what is happening. More blood will flow in the streets of Caracas, and things will get worse before they get better. Totalitarian socialism doesn't just cause economic damage. It also tears apart the fabric of society, as people stop trusting each other. Venezuela has a murder rate many times that of America. When change finally comes, it will be messy and violent, and the problems will likely spill over the border into Colombia.
It is easy to blame the Venezuelan people, since they voted for this. But they didn't have any good alternative. The pre-Chavas government was corrupt and much of the oil revenue went to the wealthy, who moved it offshore. For the first decade, most Venezuelans were probably better off under socialism... but they finally ran out of other people's money.
The opposition has no leader, and no coherent plan besides getting rid of Maduro. They spend a lot of time squabbling among themselves. What a mess.
Not sure it's a good idea putting it in the hands of a corporation like Microsoft.
That is not what is being proposed here. The spectrum would be unlicensed. Microsoft could use it, but so could anyone else, similar to how anyone can use 2.4GHz.
More unlicensed spectrum would be good from everyone except the telcos. It would spur innovation, cut costs, and provide no specific benefit to Microsoft. Microsoft is a small participant in the IoT market, and they have a poor track record outside their dominant markets. Google and Amazon will benefit from this much more than Microsoft.
Hogwash. Those are GROSS margins. Which is (revenue - COGS). In software businesses COGS is often near zero, since it doesn't include development costs (or the CEO's bonus).
But given the value of software, I can't help but feel that some of it should go to the people who write the software.
So you're a software guy who thinks software guys should get more money... and using government coercion is a legitimate way to achieve that. Of course this will mean software is more expensive for everyone else... but paying grocery store clerks more is wrong because that will make it more expensive for software guys to buy bread.
I am surprised to read such naked selfishness coming from you. Most of your posts are rational and principled.
ICEs are not 30% efficient. Also, no new coal plants are being built or even planned in America, so all new capacity will come from gas or renewables. In 2016 more than half of new capacity was wind or solar. None was coal.
The average person can see the difference between a Terminator and a Roomba. Hollywood makes stuff up. Scientists aren't going to stop that by changing their terminology every time it is used in a movie.
Unless this is accompanied with fully autonomous cars, it will be pointless.
I think that is the idea. The biggest obstacles SDC adoption are not technical, but legal and bureaucratic. Decision making in China is way more streamlined, and changes can happen amazingly fast. The switch to SDCs will likely happen first in China.
two clueless idiots can drive side-by-side, blocking both lanes, causing us all to stop at those lights.
I am working in Shanghai right now, and will be here until October. Since I was here last time, they have installed cameras at many of the intersections that monitor the traffic. If the cameras see a stream of traffic, they will hold the light longer to let more traffic pass. If they see a lag, they will switch the light early. I don't know the tech behind the camera (maybe they have a guy in a room making the decisions) but it seems to ease the problem you describe.
You already have. The idea that "AI" only means human level intelligence was invented by Hollywood. Actual researchers (who coined the term in 1956) have always used "AI" to refer to their field of study, which includes both "strong" and "weak" AI.
You should spend less time watching movies and more time reading. More Geoff Hinton, less Will Smith.
Saying "AI" only refers to human level intelligence is as silly as saying that "engineering" is only "real" if it involves a True Scotsman working with dilithium crystals.
I do the same, except I have the same 6 byte prefix for all the passwords. So if a password is listed in "passwords.txt" as "correctHorseBatteryStaple" the real password is "7Rz8t5correctHorseBatteryStaple". If anyone gets access to my list, they won't know the prefix, or even know that there is a prefix.
There is an upper limit to the volume of vehicles that a city can handle
That number is going up. The bottleneck is cars queueing at intersections, but existing tech can greatly improve throughput by automating the acceleration and minimizing the distance between cars, so many more cars can pass through an intersection during each light change. China is making big progress on this, including a system to feed traffic light timing information directly to cars so they can brake and accelerate more intelligently. Self-driving cars will also eliminate a lot of street parking, freeing up additional lanes for traffic.
I'm still most worried about when we get really fully automated cars - the amount of mileage is going to skyrocket.
It seems to me the opposite is true. Many round-trips to pickup/dropoff something/someone can be replaced with a one-way trip by an automated vehicle. Trip-pooling will be easier, so instead of 5 people in my neighborhood each making a round-trip to the grocery store, a single automated delivery vehicle can make one trip with 5 stops.
Thorium and fusion will still be hurdled by opposition set up by the anti-nuclear crowd.
The main hurdle for nukes is not protesters, but cheap shale gas and the falling cost of wind power. Even a totally safe reactor is not going to be built if it makes no economic sense.
The article isn't even complaining about CO2 or global warming... it's talking about real pollution.
TFA is written by someone that doesn't even understand how electric vehicles work. EVs emit very little dust from brake pads, because they use regenerative braking (running the engine backwards to recharge the battery) and use the brake pads for only the last 10% of deceleration. Since energy is proportional to the square of the velocity, this last 10% of velocity is only 1% of the energy. Brake pads on EVs have so little wear that they last the life of the car.
Tire/Tyre wear is a concern because EVs have much higher starting torque. Tesla owner often report accelerated tire wear. But this is something that could be mostly solved in software, by controlling the torque. This would likely be unpopular.
Anyway, I am sceptical about whether "tire dust" is really a significant problem compared to tailpipe emissions. The sounds like silly alarmism to me, and makes me wonder if someone with an ulterior agenda is pushing this FUD.
We need an explanation. Blaming cellphones is an explanation. Therefore we need to blame cellphones.
But that explanation needs to be offered if one is to block an inference you the best explanation argument that cellphone use is the culprit.
Baloney. Science doesn't work that way. A hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence. It is not accepted as fact just because of a lack of evidence for alternative explanations.
First of all: There's not currently such a thing as real 'AI'
There's not currently such a thing as strong AI. Please learn the correct terminology. Weak AI is very real, and is a multi-billion dollar technology employing thousands of academics and industry professionals.
it's all 'machine learning' which is not the same thing.
Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.
Who cares? Revolutionizing transportation is more important than a few VCs making a buck. If they can't handle competition, it is unlikely they would have been successful anyway.
As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it
Hyperloop uses many small independent pods rather than a single long train. So on a busy route such as NYC to DC, a pod would launch every minute or so. Rather than a fixed schedule, it would make more sense to just launch each pod as it filled up.
Except there is no "future" here. The problem is fully resolved. No one was harmed. No one will be harmed. It is over. Other than just gratuitous Uber-bashing, it is a non-story.
Slashdot Mirror
Neither Sweden, nor Germany became prosperous prior to instituting a Leftist agenda.
Germany was the first country to implement modern state socialism, including healthcare, pensions, disability, and support for families with children, beginning in 1883 under the guidance of that bleeding heart liberal Chancellor Otto von Bismark. At the time, German per capita income was a tiny fraction of what it is today.
Germany? "leftist"?
By European standards, Germany is economically conservative. But compared to America, Germany is "leftist". Like most people, Americans use themselves as the reference point. Plenty of Americans believe their own government to be leftist.
I also blame outside negative interference, it always makes things worse, and radicalizes society at all levels.
Who interfered? There are Cubans in Venezuela, but they were invited in, and aren't in control. Venezuela has bad relations with Colombia, but that is because of Chavez interfering in Colombia by supporting the FARC. Both Chavez and Maduro have blamed their problems on American interference, but that is mostly fabrication. Venezuela was kicked out of Mercosur, but their economy was already in the toilet when that finally happened.
I don't think anyone is happy about what is happening. More blood will flow in the streets of Caracas, and things will get worse before they get better. Totalitarian socialism doesn't just cause economic damage. It also tears apart the fabric of society, as people stop trusting each other. Venezuela has a murder rate many times that of America. When change finally comes, it will be messy and violent, and the problems will likely spill over the border into Colombia.
It is easy to blame the Venezuelan people, since they voted for this. But they didn't have any good alternative. The pre-Chavas government was corrupt and much of the oil revenue went to the wealthy, who moved it offshore. For the first decade, most Venezuelans were probably better off under socialism ... but they finally ran out of other people's money.
The opposition has no leader, and no coherent plan besides getting rid of Maduro. They spend a lot of time squabbling among themselves. What a mess.
Not sure it's a good idea putting it in the hands of a corporation like Microsoft.
That is not what is being proposed here. The spectrum would be unlicensed. Microsoft could use it, but so could anyone else, similar to how anyone can use 2.4GHz.
More unlicensed spectrum would be good from everyone except the telcos. It would spur innovation, cut costs, and provide no specific benefit to Microsoft. Microsoft is a small participant in the IoT market, and they have a poor track record outside their dominant markets. Google and Amazon will benefit from this much more than Microsoft.
Microsoft is doing a Good Thing here.
Here's software company margins https://seekingalpha.com/artic...
Hogwash. Those are GROSS margins. Which is (revenue - COGS). In software businesses COGS is often near zero, since it doesn't include development costs (or the CEO's bonus).
But given the value of software, I can't help but feel that some of it should go to the people who write the software.
So you're a software guy who thinks software guys should get more money ... and using government coercion is a legitimate way to achieve that. Of course this will mean software is more expensive for everyone else ... but paying grocery store clerks more is wrong because that will make it more expensive for software guys to buy bread.
I am surprised to read such naked selfishness coming from you. Most of your posts are rational and principled.
we'd have to pay programmers over $200K/year.
Why only programmers? Why shouldn't fast food workers also get $200K/year? Babysitters should get $200 / hour. Everyone can be rich.
ICEs are not 30% efficient. Also, no new coal plants are being built or even planned in America, so all new capacity will come from gas or renewables. In 2016 more than half of new capacity was wind or solar. None was coal.
It's a good idea, but you should make the prefix 8 characters long.
Some sites only allow 8 bytes. So the prefix would be the entire password, leading to the same repeated password on all these sites.
A few years ago my bank limited passwords to 8 bytes ... and insisted that they be changed every 3 months to show they were serious about security.
The average person can see the difference between a Terminator and a Roomba. Hollywood makes stuff up. Scientists aren't going to stop that by changing their terminology every time it is used in a movie.
Unless this is accompanied with fully autonomous cars, it will be pointless.
I think that is the idea. The biggest obstacles SDC adoption are not technical, but legal and bureaucratic. Decision making in China is way more streamlined, and changes can happen amazingly fast. The switch to SDCs will likely happen first in China.
two clueless idiots can drive side-by-side, blocking both lanes, causing us all to stop at those lights.
I am working in Shanghai right now, and will be here until October. Since I was here last time, they have installed cameras at many of the intersections that monitor the traffic. If the cameras see a stream of traffic, they will hold the light longer to let more traffic pass. If they see a lag, they will switch the light early. I don't know the tech behind the camera (maybe they have a guy in a room making the decisions) but it seems to ease the problem you describe.
I'm not falling for that media-driven meme
You already have. The idea that "AI" only means human level intelligence was invented by Hollywood. Actual researchers (who coined the term in 1956) have always used "AI" to refer to their field of study, which includes both "strong" and "weak" AI.
You should spend less time watching movies and more time reading. More Geoff Hinton, less Will Smith.
Saying "AI" only refers to human level intelligence is as silly as saying that "engineering" is only "real" if it involves a True Scotsman working with dilithium crystals.
I do the same, except I have the same 6 byte prefix for all the passwords. So if a password is listed in "passwords.txt" as "correctHorseBatteryStaple" the real password is "7Rz8t5correctHorseBatteryStaple". If anyone gets access to my list, they won't know the prefix, or even know that there is a prefix.
There is an upper limit to the volume of vehicles that a city can handle
That number is going up. The bottleneck is cars queueing at intersections, but existing tech can greatly improve throughput by automating the acceleration and minimizing the distance between cars, so many more cars can pass through an intersection during each light change. China is making big progress on this, including a system to feed traffic light timing information directly to cars so they can brake and accelerate more intelligently. Self-driving cars will also eliminate a lot of street parking, freeing up additional lanes for traffic.
I'm still most worried about when we get really fully automated cars - the amount of mileage is going to skyrocket.
It seems to me the opposite is true. Many round-trips to pickup/dropoff something/someone can be replaced with a one-way trip by an automated vehicle. Trip-pooling will be easier, so instead of 5 people in my neighborhood each making a round-trip to the grocery store, a single automated delivery vehicle can make one trip with 5 stops.
Thorium and fusion will still be hurdled by opposition set up by the anti-nuclear crowd.
The main hurdle for nukes is not protesters, but cheap shale gas and the falling cost of wind power. Even a totally safe reactor is not going to be built if it makes no economic sense.
The article isn't even complaining about CO2 or global warming... it's talking about real pollution.
TFA is written by someone that doesn't even understand how electric vehicles work. EVs emit very little dust from brake pads, because they use regenerative braking (running the engine backwards to recharge the battery) and use the brake pads for only the last 10% of deceleration. Since energy is proportional to the square of the velocity, this last 10% of velocity is only 1% of the energy. Brake pads on EVs have so little wear that they last the life of the car.
Tire/Tyre wear is a concern because EVs have much higher starting torque. Tesla owner often report accelerated tire wear. But this is something that could be mostly solved in software, by controlling the torque. This would likely be unpopular.
Anyway, I am sceptical about whether "tire dust" is really a significant problem compared to tailpipe emissions. The sounds like silly alarmism to me, and makes me wonder if someone with an ulterior agenda is pushing this FUD.
Such a striking uptick needs an explanation.
We need an explanation.
Blaming cellphones is an explanation.
Therefore we need to blame cellphones.
But that explanation needs to be offered if one is to block an inference you the best explanation argument that cellphone use is the culprit.
Baloney. Science doesn't work that way. A hypothesis needs to be supported by evidence. It is not accepted as fact just because of a lack of evidence for alternative explanations.
First of all: There's not currently such a thing as real 'AI'
There's not currently such a thing as strong AI. Please learn the correct terminology. Weak AI is very real, and is a multi-billion dollar technology employing thousands of academics and industry professionals.
it's all 'machine learning' which is not the same thing.
Machine learning is a subset of AI.
What China did isn't too different than what some American companies did (I forget exactly who).
It was Microsoft.
Really, I can't imagine how all of these other companies and their backers must feel. It's like they got punk'd by Elon.
Who cares? Revolutionizing transportation is more important than a few VCs making a buck. If they can't handle competition, it is unlikely they would have been successful anyway.
As long as hyperloop or whatever else operates on a fixed schedule, then it solves no problems, and people won't use it
Hyperloop uses many small independent pods rather than a single long train. So on a busy route such as NYC to DC, a pod would launch every minute or so. Rather than a fixed schedule, it would make more sense to just launch each pod as it filled up.
will verb 1. expressing the future tense.
Except there is no "future" here. The problem is fully resolved. No one was harmed. No one will be harmed. It is over. Other than just gratuitous Uber-bashing, it is a non-story.