Good luck. Before you try too hard to "go back to the good ole' days" when America didn't care about profit, you might want to read some history books. The Jamestown Colony was a profit seeking enterprise. We practiced plantation slavery for 350 years. There was never a time when America didn't care about profit, and "public works" at the federal level barely existed until FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.
The "link tax" is bad for Google and other news aggregators, bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
Maybe we should balance the budget first and fix the wasteful spending first
Speaking of wasteful spending: America spends $200B annually on oil imports, mostly from countries that are hostile to our interests. Europe (which would also benefit from any tech developed) spends even more on oil, and buys a lot of gas from Russia. America spends about $80B keeping Middle East shipping lanes open and secure.
Overall, Americans spend about $1.5T on energy, about 7% of our economy. If we could produce that energy more efficiently, that money could be spent on other things... such as balancing the budget.
I don't agree with AOC on much, but investing in developing better green tech is a no-brainer. We need better panels, smarter grids, and (most importantly) better/cheaper batteries (storage is key).
This could be a revolutionary leap forward in several technologies, job creation and American infrastructure.
It is important to get the ordering correct. It is better to develop the needed technology, and then build the infrastructure based on it.
It would be better to spend $50B on R&D rather than $500B on deployment. Once the tech is good enough, no government deployment spending is needed, because profit-seeking capitalists will do it for us.
Like my grandpa used to say: If you have two hours to chop down a tree*, spend the first hour sharpening your ax.
Disclaimer: *I am not advocating the destruction of trees.
Benefits: Tracking makes the internet more responsive to my desires. I see more relevant search results Inputs autofill more accurately. When I see ads they are more likely to be for something I want. When they see I looked at a product, but didn't buy, I may get a better offer later.
Their study is public. You can read it and point out any problems you find.
An obvious problem is blaming the disparity on "zero-rating", instead of something more obvious like the wide difference in per capita GDP and infrastructure between the "haves" and the "have nots". The difference between Luxembourg and Montenegro (with a twelfth the median income) likely has other explanations.
I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly. That is about the same as telling them they are deplorable, which, if you recall, wasn't a successful strategy.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies: 1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't. 2. That poor states like Mississippi voted 100% Republican. Guess what? They didn't. Poor people in red states vote blue. It is the middle class where the Democrats lost.
It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me".
False. Several companies, including Google, initially honored the flag. They only abandoned it in the face of Microsoft's sabotage.
Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it?
It could have evolved into something workable, possibly with legislative backing. But Microsoft prevented that from happening by ensuring it was a complete and utter failure from the very start.
It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists.
No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.
"Do Not Track" was supposed to represent an affirmative request by the user to not be tracked. But that is not how Microsoft implemented. They turned the flag on for everyone, so that it meant nothing. They intentionally poisoned the concept.
Better analogy would be Nazi cold exposure science.
Indeed. Much of what we know about reviving cold water drowning victims comes from research conducted by Nazis on prisoners.
Should we insist that these victims die instead, because the research was unethical? There are activists calling for exactly that. So the death of innocent people would be honored by... deaths of additional innocent people.
Wait, you are saying that the temperature has been increasing over the past 200 years. Right when we started massively burning fossil fuels.
The amount of fossil fuels burned 200 years ago was negligible. The warming trend in that era was likely caused by variations in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, and changes in ocean circulation. The Little Ice Age was ending, so the increase in temperature was more of returning to normal. 1816 was known as the Year without a Summer, or more colloquially as "Eighteen hundred and froze to death". From there, there was nowhere to go but up.
Fossil fuel consumption didn't add appreciable CO2 to the atmosphere until the 20th century, when temperature rises appear to have accelerated.
If anything, that falsifies CO2 based global warming because there was warming before there was abnormally high CO2.
There is indeed an underlying warming trend that has been going on since the 1600s. There is a longer warming trend that began abruptly 11,700 years ago, triggering the Holocene glacial retreat.
The current warming trend, presumably induced by CO2, is happening faster, and overlaying that longer and gentler warming trends.
The existence of these long term trends does not falsify AGW.
you need more than "it is warmer", because "it will be warmer" was the best guess prior to any thought of CO2 base warming
Absolutely. You can't just say "it's getting warmer". The important question is "how much warmer?"
Slashdot Mirror
No, I will stay here and get things fixed.
Good luck. Before you try too hard to "go back to the good ole' days" when America didn't care about profit, you might want to read some history books. The Jamestown Colony was a profit seeking enterprise. We practiced plantation slavery for 350 years. There was never a time when America didn't care about profit, and "public works" at the federal level barely existed until FDR's New Deal in the 1930s.
The "link tax" is bad for Google and other news aggregators, bad for consumers, and likely bad for news sites as well. It is an erosion of the public's right to fair use of information.
It's hard to believe that they thought they could get away with leaving the fiber two inches under the ground.
It wasn't under two inches of dirt. It was under two inches of asphalt.
... and why should Spotify care is some sponging freeloader leaves, and stops wasting their bandwidth?
Maybe we should balance the budget first and fix the wasteful spending first
Speaking of wasteful spending: America spends $200B annually on oil imports, mostly from countries that are hostile to our interests. Europe (which would also benefit from any tech developed) spends even more on oil, and buys a lot of gas from Russia. America spends about $80B keeping Middle East shipping lanes open and secure.
Overall, Americans spend about $1.5T on energy, about 7% of our economy. If we could produce that energy more efficiently, that money could be spent on other things ... such as balancing the budget.
I don't agree with AOC on much, but investing in developing better green tech is a no-brainer. We need better panels, smarter grids, and (most importantly) better/cheaper batteries (storage is key).
Actually, converting military bases to renewable energy is a great way to build resiliency from attack
Cool. I can't wait to see what VT mortars can do to the solar panels at an Afghan FOB.
This could be a revolutionary leap forward in several technologies, job creation and American infrastructure.
It is important to get the ordering correct. It is better to develop the needed technology, and then build the infrastructure based on it.
It would be better to spend $50B on R&D rather than $500B on deployment. Once the tech is good enough, no government deployment spending is needed, because profit-seeking capitalists will do it for us.
Like my grandpa used to say: If you have two hours to chop down a tree*, spend the first hour sharpening your ax.
Disclaimer: *I am not advocating the destruction of trees.
Now seriously evangelicals, do you think that a man with the curriculum vitae of the present occupant is really anti-abortion?
It doesn't matter what his personal view are. All that matters is who he appoints to the Supreme Court.
So far, he has delivered to the evangelicals exactly what they want: Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
The couldn't be happier. Neil and Brett will be on the court for many decades.
The Senate is still Republican, and they may get another seat. RBG is 85. Stephen Breyer is 80.
Advertisers aren't automatically entitled to benefit from a user's apathy.
Advocates aren't automatically entitled to insist they represent the interests of the apathetic.
Some of us are very passionate about our apathy.
No one wants to be tracked
False. I want to be tracked.
Benefits:
Tracking makes the internet more responsive to my desires.
I see more relevant search results
Inputs autofill more accurately.
When I see ads they are more likely to be for something I want.
When they see I looked at a product, but didn't buy, I may get a better offer later.
Downsides:
Nothing that I can see.
Given this bias, do you think they are interested in presenting information that would benefit the majority of people?
Given this bias, do you think they are open minded about what benefits the majority, or do think their minds are made up?
Their study is public. You can read it and point out any problems you find.
An obvious problem is blaming the disparity on "zero-rating", instead of something more obvious like the wide difference in per capita GDP and infrastructure between the "haves" and the "have nots". The difference between Luxembourg and Montenegro (with a twelfth the median income) likely has other explanations.
I'm also thoroughly convinced it's an exercise in futility attempting to convince Trump supporters to stop voting against their own best interests.
If you want to change their votes, perhaps you could start by listening to their concerns, instead of telling them they are too stupid to vote properly. That is about the same as telling them they are deplorable, which, if you recall, wasn't a successful strategy.
The myth that Republicans vote against their own interests is based on two fallacies:
1. That they share your views about what their "best interests" are. They don't.
2. That poor states like Mississippi voted 100% Republican. Guess what? They didn't. Poor people in red states vote blue. It is the middle class where the Democrats lost.
Epicenter.works is an advocacy organization, not a research organization. So this "study" may be a bit biased. They have an agenda to push.
It's extremely naive to think that any ad company whose entire business model is suck up as much data as possible is going to honor the user's preference to "please don't track me".
False. Several companies, including Google, initially honored the flag. They only abandoned it in the face of Microsoft's sabotage.
Are you seriously suggesting that if it had been an opt-out rather than an opt-in, advertisers would have obeyed it?
It could have evolved into something workable, possibly with legislative backing. But Microsoft prevented that from happening by ensuring it was a complete and utter failure from the very start.
Only by default. If someone wanted to be tracked, they could easily turn the flag off.
Almost nobody is going to do that. Which makes the feature completely useless. Which was Microsoft's intent. They won.
It was always a naive solution put forth by idealistic technologists.
No it wasn't. It was a reasonable solution that was intentionally sabotaged by Microsoft.
"Do Not Track" was supposed to represent an affirmative request by the user to not be tracked. But that is not how Microsoft implemented. They turned the flag on for everyone, so that it meant nothing. They intentionally poisoned the concept.
Slashdot is not yet a chinese propaganda machine.
Correct. It would need to support Unicode for that.
The Chinese government still exists. Discarding their research may prevent them from doing more like these.
China isn't going to eradicate capital punishment because "The West" refuses to read their research papers.
Deleting these papers from the archives is going to save exactly zero lives.
WTF is a "shopper" in this context?
You use InstaCart to hire a shopper to shop on your behalf.
Just like you use Uber to hire a driver to drive on your behalf.
You are the customer. The shopper/driver is a worker, and may or may not be an employee depending on jurisdiction.
Well, at least I don't have to wonder anymore why I was perma-banned for posting "I think Xi Jinping may be overrated."
Since Slashdot is not banned or censored in China, you have already posted that.
Better analogy would be Nazi cold exposure science.
Indeed. Much of what we know about reviving cold water drowning victims comes from research conducted by Nazis on prisoners.
Should we insist that these victims die instead, because the research was unethical? There are activists calling for exactly that. So the death of innocent people would be honored by ... deaths of additional innocent people.
The Dacau Hypothermia Experiments
Why is the organ transplant research any different?
What is the next step? Should we also throwout research from scientists that were unethical in the personal lives?
Wait, you are saying that the temperature has been increasing over the past 200 years. Right when we started massively burning fossil fuels.
The amount of fossil fuels burned 200 years ago was negligible. The warming trend in that era was likely caused by variations in solar radiation, heightened volcanic activity, and changes in ocean circulation. The Little Ice Age was ending, so the increase in temperature was more of returning to normal. 1816 was known as the Year without a Summer, or more colloquially as "Eighteen hundred and froze to death". From there, there was nowhere to go but up.
Fossil fuel consumption didn't add appreciable CO2 to the atmosphere until the 20th century, when temperature rises appear to have accelerated.
If anything, that falsifies CO2 based global warming because there was warming before there was abnormally high CO2.
There is indeed an underlying warming trend that has been going on since the 1600s. There is a longer warming trend that began abruptly 11,700 years ago, triggering the Holocene glacial retreat.
The current warming trend, presumably induced by CO2, is happening faster, and overlaying that longer and gentler warming trends.
The existence of these long term trends does not falsify AGW.
you need more than "it is warmer", because "it will be warmer" was the best guess prior to any thought of CO2 base warming
Absolutely. You can't just say "it's getting warmer". The important question is "how much warmer?"