Will Slashdot be affected by this? Will it no longer be accessible in China?
Slashdot is accessible in China, always has been, and will likely continue to be. This law only affects material hosted in China. The Chinese government doesn't care much about material published in English, unless it is overtly political.
If Slashdot started supporting utf8, so that people could post in Chinese, the situation might change. But we all know that will never happen.
Like insurance, shouldn't you pay more for the protection of your property if you have more property to protect? As such, shouldn't the wealthy be paying a larger share of their income to taxes to protect their larger share of the benefit of government protection?
Your argument doesn't make sense. Of course the rich should pay more in taxes. But should they pay a higher percentage? Your "insurance" analogy does not support that. If I insure twice as much value, I pay twice as much, not three times as much.
Progressive taxation cannot be justified in terms of paying for services. It can only be justified if you believe that government should be an instrument of social justice.
But the materials you have to select are crazy expensive
Carbon fiber is not susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement, and is not expensive. It has enough desirable properties that you would probably choose it for the H2 container even if embrittlement was not an issue.
increased demand will only increase those costs.
Not true. Demand increases cost only if the supply is fixed. For manufactured materials like carbon fiber, demand lowers the cost because it increases economies of scale.
Uber is NOT the only job available to ANYONE. They can work for Lyft, they can rent a medallion and drive a cab, they can offer rides on Craigslist, get a job as a courier, etc. Or they could even do something other than driving. No one is forced to work for Uber. For about half of Uber drivers, it is not even their primary job.
Automation is advancing more rapidly and in more industries than the time period of your example.
Automation of agriculture a century and a half ago affected far more people than automation today, because back then almost everyone was a farmer. Today, automation is having a much smaller impact, so it should be easier to adjust.
In those poor countries there is an unsustainable birth rate. There are too many people.
Not true. Much of South America has a birthrate below replacement level. Italy and Greece have the highest unemployment of any 1st World countries, and the lowest birthrates outside of Japan. Unemployment has little correlation with population growth.
Automation and AI are for real. I've heard about job replacement by automation my whole life. But now it is seriously happening and not just for menial labor.
There is actually very little evidence for that. America is at full employment. Labor force participation is not back to where it was in 2007, but that is mostly due to an aging population, not lack of jobs. If you look around the world, countries with the most automation (Japan, Germany, America) have the lowest unemployment, while countries with the least automation (India, Africa, Latin America) have the highest. This is exactly the opposite of what your theory would predict.
Automation is nothing new. Automated looms destroyed the jobs of weavers two centuries ago. In the late 1800s, automation of agriculture destroyed the majority of the jobs. Plenty of people predicted gloom and decline. Yet the opposite happened: The economy prospered and living standards soared. Technology makes workers more productive, and makes good and services cheaper in terms of human labor. There is little evidence that "this time things are different".
In aggregate, this would almost certainly be true. But UBI is not supposed to create wealth, it is supposed to redistribute it. The "losers" would be people that work and pay taxes. The "winners" would be people that don't. So inequality would be reduced, at the cost of lower production through reduced incentives. But is the reduction in inequality enough to justify the reduction in productivity, especially when compared to alternatives like EITC? We don't know, and that is what this experiment is designed to find out.
A person who buys one of these paid a premium for those extra functions.
Not really. I recently bought a TV at Costco, and ALL the TVs were "smart". Unless you are buying used, a dumb TV is no longer an option. There doesn't seem to be any premium for additional "smart" features. It is mostly just software, which has near zero marginal cost.
It was long in coming, but in the end, I see the quail got their revenge.
These quail were raised in coops, with plenty of human contact, and then released right before the "hunt". They have little fear of humans, and killing them is hardly "sport". He should have just gone to the local animal shelter, adopted some kittens, and then taken them home and drowned them.
Humans killed 400+ civilians at My Lai, and 200+ civilians at No Gun Ri. Both massacres were the result of rage and fear. Robots don't feel those emotions, and have committed no massacres on that scale. I trust robots more than I trust humans.
Restrictions on nuclear warheads, ships, etc. make sense because they can be verified. Restrictions on software have no means of verification, so any ban on autonomous robots is wishful thinking.
Regulations to fix externalities like pollution and safety are generally good. Regulations and tariffs designed to "fix" the economy, on the theory that politicians are smarter than the market, are generally bad.
Almost all poor countries would be better off with more regulations on pollution and safety, and much lower tariffs/subsidies/cronyism. Richer countries tend to have a better balance, which is part of the reason they are richer.
My guess is that she drove to Croatia to hookup with someone she met online, and then she made up the story about the defective GPS as a cover story. Since everyone believed the story, maybe she isn't as dumb as you think.
Inequality is a serious problem, but it is not specific to America. It is a worldwide problem in all developed countries. It is driven much more by technology than trade. It is hard to get a raise if you are competing with a servo-motor. So instead of advocating tariffs, you should be advocating bans on productivity enhancing technological improvements.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example.
What??? Germany has among the lowest tariffs in the world. Most of their imports are completely tariff free. On a per capita basis, they have one of the world's highest rates or both imports and exports, much higher than America's.
Tariff policy was always controversial in America, with northern industrialists preferring protection for industry, and southern and western agricultural regions preferring free trade. It was a contributing factor in the Civil War. The victors were able to impose their high tariffs, and as a result, the South was relatively impoverished until tariffs were reduced after the folly of excessive tariffs was fully exposed in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
NAFTA etc. are working exactly as designed, inspiring a race to the bottom in terms of quality of living and wages.
This is nonsense. NAFTA has had the opposite effect. American and Canada have kept their environment and safety protections, while Mexico has improved dramatically. Moreover, Mexican labor conditions have improved the most in the Maquiladoras along the US border. They didn't pull us down. We pulled them up.
If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
There is little evidence for that. The problem with tariffs is that other countries can also use them, and will do so to retaliate against our tariffs. So trade wars quickly degenerate into a race to the bottom, as populists in each country demand higher and higher barriers. Countries end up producing products where they have little competitive advantage. Do you think America would be richer if we produced more t-shirts and fewer aircraft and CPUs?
If you look around the world today, the countries with the highest trade barriers tend to be impoverished. They also tend to be authoritarian. Governments that believe in economic repression tend to believe in political repression as well.
There have already been many deaths caused by software bugs. There is plenty of legal precedent. This is nothing new.
In most past instances, the manufacturer has been held responsible. The owner of the device may be held partially or fully responsible if they were using their device irresponsibly, or had modified it in a way that caused or contributed to the failure.
Companies need to embrace telecommuting rather than putting up obstacles to it.
1. Be careful what you wish for. If a job can be done remotely from your house, then it can also be done remotely from Bangalore.
2. Have you ever worked for a company with many employees telecommuting? They tend to be dysfunctional, with many workers out-of-the-loop, and poor coordination. It is surprising how much companies rely on informal communication around the water cooler, or chance meetings in the break room.
Then Google can pay the insurance, right? This should save consumers billions.
Not if Google adds thousands to the car's price tag, effectively making you pay for the insurance.
SDCs have already driven millions of miles on public roads, and have a far better safety record than human drivers. As software improves, and hardware gets faster, their safety record will get even better. So the cost to insure them will be much lower, regardless of whether the cost of the insurance is incorporated into the car price, or purchased separately.
Consumers will indeed save billions. I would not recommend investing in auto insurance companies. Their business model is due for disruption.
Slashdot Mirror
Will Slashdot be affected by this? Will it no longer be accessible in China?
Slashdot is accessible in China, always has been, and will likely continue to be. This law only affects material hosted in China. The Chinese government doesn't care much about material published in English, unless it is overtly political.
If Slashdot started supporting utf8, so that people could post in Chinese, the situation might change. But we all know that will never happen.
Like insurance, shouldn't you pay more for the protection of your property if you have more property to protect? As such, shouldn't the wealthy be paying a larger share of their income to taxes to protect their larger share of the benefit of government protection?
Your argument doesn't make sense. Of course the rich should pay more in taxes. But should they pay a higher percentage? Your "insurance" analogy does not support that. If I insure twice as much value, I pay twice as much, not three times as much.
Progressive taxation cannot be justified in terms of paying for services. It can only be justified if you believe that government should be an instrument of social justice.
A hydrogen based vehicle economy needs some inexpensive, safe way to ship the fuel in bulk.
Hydrogen can be generated on-site by either electrolysis of water, or reforming of natural gas. There is no need for H2 pipelines.
But the materials you have to select are crazy expensive
Carbon fiber is not susceptible to hydrogen embrittlement, and is not expensive. It has enough desirable properties that you would probably choose it for the H2 container even if embrittlement was not an issue.
increased demand will only increase those costs.
Not true. Demand increases cost only if the supply is fixed. For manufactured materials like carbon fiber, demand lowers the cost because it increases economies of scale.
If it's the only one available to you ...
Uber is NOT the only job available to ANYONE. They can work for Lyft, they can rent a medallion and drive a cab, they can offer rides on Craigslist, get a job as a courier, etc. Or they could even do something other than driving. No one is forced to work for Uber. For about half of Uber drivers, it is not even their primary job.
Automation is advancing more rapidly and in more industries than the time period of your example.
Automation of agriculture a century and a half ago affected far more people than automation today, because back then almost everyone was a farmer. Today, automation is having a much smaller impact, so it should be easier to adjust.
In those poor countries there is an unsustainable birth rate. There are too many people.
Not true. Much of South America has a birthrate below replacement level. Italy and Greece have the highest unemployment of any 1st World countries, and the lowest birthrates outside of Japan. Unemployment has little correlation with population growth.
Automation and AI are for real. I've heard about job replacement by automation my whole life. But now it is seriously happening and not just for menial labor.
There is actually very little evidence for that. America is at full employment. Labor force participation is not back to where it was in 2007, but that is mostly due to an aging population, not lack of jobs. If you look around the world, countries with the most automation (Japan, Germany, America) have the lowest unemployment, while countries with the least automation (India, Africa, Latin America) have the highest. This is exactly the opposite of what your theory would predict.
Automation is nothing new. Automated looms destroyed the jobs of weavers two centuries ago. In the late 1800s, automation of agriculture destroyed the majority of the jobs. Plenty of people predicted gloom and decline. Yet the opposite happened: The economy prospered and living standards soared. Technology makes workers more productive, and makes good and services cheaper in terms of human labor. There is little evidence that "this time things are different".
the article is all about miniaturising supercaps.
No it isn't. It is about making them stick to silicon.
Miniaturising supercaps to chip-scale could, in theory, massively increase the energy density
No. Energy density is an intrinsic property. It doesn't change with scale.
now people are worse off than they were before.
In aggregate, this would almost certainly be true. But UBI is not supposed to create wealth, it is supposed to redistribute it. The "losers" would be people that work and pay taxes. The "winners" would be people that don't. So inequality would be reduced, at the cost of lower production through reduced incentives. But is the reduction in inequality enough to justify the reduction in productivity, especially when compared to alternatives like EITC? We don't know, and that is what this experiment is designed to find out.
they could store enough charge to run the phone for days or even weeks.
Not true. Even the best supercaps have an energy density far lower than batteries.
A person who buys one of these paid a premium for those extra functions.
Not really. I recently bought a TV at Costco, and ALL the TVs were "smart". Unless you are buying used, a dumb TV is no longer an option. There doesn't seem to be any premium for additional "smart" features. It is mostly just software, which has near zero marginal cost.
It was long in coming, but in the end, I see the quail got their revenge.
These quail were raised in coops, with plenty of human contact, and then released right before the "hunt". They have little fear of humans, and killing them is hardly "sport". He should have just gone to the local animal shelter, adopted some kittens, and then taken them home and drowned them.
And the answer is when it becomes human.
Humans killed 400+ civilians at My Lai, and 200+ civilians at No Gun Ri. Both massacres were the result of rage and fear. Robots don't feel those emotions, and have committed no massacres on that scale. I trust robots more than I trust humans.
Restrictions on nuclear warheads, ships, etc. make sense because they can be verified. Restrictions on software have no means of verification, so any ban on autonomous robots is wishful thinking.
Are you advocating removing all regulations?
Regulations to fix externalities like pollution and safety are generally good. Regulations and tariffs designed to "fix" the economy, on the theory that politicians are smarter than the market, are generally bad.
Almost all poor countries would be better off with more regulations on pollution and safety, and much lower tariffs/subsidies/cronyism. Richer countries tend to have a better balance, which is part of the reason they are richer.
My guess is that she drove to Croatia to hookup with someone she met online, and then she made up the story about the defective GPS as a cover story. Since everyone believed the story, maybe she isn't as dumb as you think.
Inequality is a serious problem, but it is not specific to America. It is a worldwide problem in all developed countries. It is driven much more by technology than trade. It is hard to get a raise if you are competing with a servo-motor. So instead of advocating tariffs, you should be advocating bans on productivity enhancing technological improvements.
I won't claim to know a lot about it, but I would say Germany is a counter example.
What??? Germany has among the lowest tariffs in the world. Most of their imports are completely tariff free. On a per capita basis, they have one of the world's highest rates or both imports and exports, much higher than America's.
Was it impoverished and authoritarian back then?
Tariff policy was always controversial in America, with northern industrialists preferring protection for industry, and southern and western agricultural regions preferring free trade. It was a contributing factor in the Civil War. The victors were able to impose their high tariffs, and as a result, the South was relatively impoverished until tariffs were reduced after the folly of excessive tariffs was fully exposed in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
NAFTA etc. are working exactly as designed, inspiring a race to the bottom in terms of quality of living and wages.
This is nonsense. NAFTA has had the opposite effect. American and Canada have kept their environment and safety protections, while Mexico has improved dramatically. Moreover, Mexican labor conditions have improved the most in the Maquiladoras along the US border. They didn't pull us down. We pulled them up.
If laws can drive industry away, they can keep it around too.
There is little evidence for that. The problem with tariffs is that other countries can also use them, and will do so to retaliate against our tariffs. So trade wars quickly degenerate into a race to the bottom, as populists in each country demand higher and higher barriers. Countries end up producing products where they have little competitive advantage. Do you think America would be richer if we produced more t-shirts and fewer aircraft and CPUs?
If you look around the world today, the countries with the highest trade barriers tend to be impoverished. They also tend to be authoritarian. Governments that believe in economic repression tend to believe in political repression as well.
So this appears not to have any practical applications.
It also doesn't do anything for theory. No one ever doubted that it was theoretically possible. So it was pointless from any perspective.
...until the first time AI kills someone.
There have already been many deaths caused by software bugs. There is plenty of legal precedent. This is nothing new.
In most past instances, the manufacturer has been held responsible. The owner of the device may be held partially or fully responsible if they were using their device irresponsibly, or had modified it in a way that caused or contributed to the failure.
Companies need to embrace telecommuting rather than putting up obstacles to it.
1. Be careful what you wish for. If a job can be done remotely from your house, then it can also be done remotely from Bangalore.
2. Have you ever worked for a company with many employees telecommuting? They tend to be dysfunctional, with many workers out-of-the-loop, and poor coordination. It is surprising how much companies rely on informal communication around the water cooler, or chance meetings in the break room.
Not if Google adds thousands to the car's price tag, effectively making you pay for the insurance.
SDCs have already driven millions of miles on public roads, and have a far better safety record than human drivers. As software improves, and hardware gets faster, their safety record will get even better. So the cost to insure them will be much lower, regardless of whether the cost of the insurance is incorporated into the car price, or purchased separately.
Consumers will indeed save billions. I would not recommend investing in auto insurance companies. Their business model is due for disruption.