The hijackers were people that opposed the Saudi ruling family, and especially opposed America's alliance with KSA, and the presence of infidel American troops in the Arabian Peninsula.
The US gets very little oil from the ME. We protect shipping routes mostly. Lefties still working from 1970s data.
We don't get much oil from Saudi Arabia, but they are an important counterweight to Iran. Iran is our enemy because... umm, we need an enemy because... well, we spend $610B a year on weapons and we need to justify that somehow.
Typically there is a jury involved if death by volts in the USA
Do you believe juries make the process fair? Juries are easily swayed by expensive lawyers. A poor person is far more likely to be found guilty and sentenced to death in America than a rich person committing a similar crime.
Saudi Arabia uses Sharia Law, and the "jury" consists of educated clerics who are far less likely to be sway by appeals to emotion. Several members of the royal family have been beheaded.
Can you even imagine America executing a Trump or Clinton?
Brain implants are science, not science fiction. Commercialization is still a ways off, but thought control is working in the lab. The first commercial applications will likely be in medial devices for amputees and paraplegics. The mass market will follow.
QWERTY will not be completely replaced, but I know many people who use voice for 90% of their input needs. But that doesn't work for coding.
Strap-on neural sensors have big limitations, but a brain implant with a direct connection to neurons could give you not only text input, but also thought control over light, appliances, etc. You could also use it as an alarm clock that you can't lose, a reminder and appointment calendar, as well as a place to keep always-accessible notes.
They will need to figure out how to disable it during exams.
The average SS check is $1400, and many millions get more than that, up to $2500/month... because they paid in much more over their working lifetime.
There is no plausible proposal for UBI that pays out that much. Most proposals are for about $500/month. So millions of people, retired and with no other income, will be worse off.
the human labor being wasted in the complex administration of these programs
Administration of SS and other entitlements is a minuscule portion of the costs of these programs. Far less than 1%.
Remember folks, if white people invent or discovered something, within a year Chinese "scholars" will find proof that they did it first.
Nobody is claiming that. Vaccination and innoculation (variolation) are two different things. Vaccination was discovered in England in 1798. Variolation was discovered in China in the 10th century. Both of these are backed up by contemporaneous historical records.
There are written records as early as 1721 of Americans being inoculated with variola, that specifically state that the technique was learned from Africans. That is 80 years before the cowpox vaccine was discovered in England.
Indeed they did. But October 2008 was not the best time to do a redesign. When the lifeboat is sinking, you don't debate, you grab a bucket and start bailing.
The time for the redesign came later. The solution from the left was Sarbanes-Oxley. The solution from the right was more deregulation. I'm not sure which was worse.
No. Most proposals for UBI pay for it with taxes on capital gains and carried interest, and a progressive income tax. Higher income people make much of their money from interest and dividends.
So in theory, it is mostly a tax on capital, not a tax on labor.
What is it always a plumber in these anecdotal stories from the Right...
Because plumbers are such an easy example to point out where there is clear demand, good pay, an accessible skill, and plenty of opportunity for anyone willing to work.
Many people need carpenters and electricians, but almost everyone eventually needs a plumber. When they realize how hard they are to find, and how well they are paid, it puts the lie to the liberal argument that "People can't find good jobs".
UBI is hand in hand with the surge of talk about Socialism, at least in the US.
Almost nobody in America is advocating for socialism. When progressives say "socialism", they mean European-style social democracy, which is a form of capitalism, and is NOT socialism.
Socialism means government ownership of the means of production. It has been tried many times, has never worked well, and has proved to be incompatible with democracy and basic human rights.
In the United States, we have had a rapidly growing money supply, based entirely on the Fed printing money, and it has not led to inflation.
This is misleading. The whole point of QE was to prevent a deflationary spiral in the aftermath of the financial crisis. So while it didn't lead to high inflation, it did lead to much higher inflation than we would have otherwise had.
In 2008, we came very close to another great depression, and it was QE, Obama's stimulus package, and yes, the unpopular but necessary bank bailout, that kept that from happening.
UBI is a safety net without the expensive part of qualifying people for different welfare programs. Nothing more or less.
It also screws over all the recipients of existing programs, because the benefits will have to be far lower if they are universal. So people that paid into Social Security for a lifetime lose most of their entitlements. Do you think that is even remotely politically plausible?
If you are mathematically clueless, you could say "Hey, just exclude Social Security". But once you exclude SS, there is no where near enough money for a meaningful UBI.
Here is a list of people that will get screwed by UBI:
1. The top 60%, who will pay more in new taxes than they receive in benefits. 2. The bottom 10% who are receiving more in benefits now than under UBI. 3. Anyone over 65 (16% of the population).
This is a strong super majority. How are you going to get these people to vote against their own interests?
Then work for yourself. Learn a skill and put an ad on Craigslist. I hired a plumber from Craigslist last month for $70 an hour. Everyone else was either too busy or charging even more. There is plenty of opportunity for anyone willing to show up on time and do the work.
I have only seen human sidewalk poo in the Tenderloin district and SOMA. It isn't that big of an issue. Dog poo is a bigger and more widespread problem.
The book seems silly and unfocused. Many of the people interviewed don't even live in SF and never have. Regis McKenna was based in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, a world away from the streets of SF. And a longshoreman? The longshoremen left SF 50 years ago when the container ports opened in Oakland. That had absolutely nothing to do with "tech companies".
SF's problems today are mostly political, with economically illiterate voters supporting both "no-growth" and "affordable housing", and then looking at tech as a scapegoat when they don't get the utopia they were promised.
Smallpox vaccine is made using cowpox. You do not need smallpox pathogens at all.
Centuries before Dr Jenner made the first vaccine from cowpox, the Chinese had developed inoculation using smallpox directly. Smallpox is most deadly when it infects the lungs first, suffocating the victim before any immunity develops. So the Chinese would take scabs from pustules, crush them up, and use a needle to poke it into the skin of uninfected people. This would cause a mild form of the disease with about a 2% mortality rate, far below the 30-50% rate from airborne infections, but induce full immunity.
The technique spread from China through the Islamic world to West Africa, and was taught to white Americans by African slaves.
Many of those fields are critical. Psychology for one is HUGE.
In college, psychology is a dumping ground for people that can't figure out what else to major in. The most common job for psychology majors a year after graduation is "Uber driver". I don't think these people should be our guiding lights.
The premise of TFA is silly: 1. STEM degrees require a lot of humanities courses. 2. There is no objective evidence that STEM people are less ethical or empathic than humanities majors. 3. Many of the decisions TFA talks about aren't made by the engineering department.
That the leader of Mozilla is focusing on crap like this explains much about the state of their software.
Slashdot Mirror
9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
The hijackers were people that opposed the Saudi ruling family, and especially opposed America's alliance with KSA, and the presence of infidel American troops in the Arabian Peninsula.
The US gets very little oil from the ME. We protect shipping routes mostly. Lefties still working from 1970s data.
We don't get much oil from Saudi Arabia, but they are an important counterweight to Iran. Iran is our enemy because ... umm, we need an enemy because ... well, we spend $610B a year on weapons and we need to justify that somehow.
Iran wants WAR
Typically there is a jury involved if death by volts in the USA
Do you believe juries make the process fair? Juries are easily swayed by expensive lawyers. A poor person is far more likely to be found guilty and sentenced to death in America than a rich person committing a similar crime.
Saudi Arabia uses Sharia Law, and the "jury" consists of educated clerics who are far less likely to be sway by appeals to emotion. Several members of the royal family have been beheaded.
Can you even imagine America executing a Trump or Clinton?
I wonder what these same employees would do when China comes knocking on their freedom.
China has no interest in "attacking our freedom".
America has 170,000 troops in East Asia. China has none in North America.
That is science fiction at this point
Brain implants are science, not science fiction. Commercialization is still a ways off, but thought control is working in the lab. The first commercial applications will likely be in medial devices for amputees and paraplegics. The mass market will follow.
QWERTY will not be completely replaced, but I know many people who use voice for 90% of their input needs. But that doesn't work for coding.
Strap-on neural sensors have big limitations, but a brain implant with a direct connection to neurons could give you not only text input, but also thought control over light, appliances, etc. You could also use it as an alarm clock that you can't lose, a reminder and appointment calendar, as well as a place to keep always-accessible notes.
They will need to figure out how to disable it during exams.
The interest that the Fed is still paying banks for their reserves is part of quantitative easing.
No it isn't. That is not what QE means.
They're getting money for free
The Fed funds rate is 2.25%. That is low by historical standards, but it is not "free".
what is the interest rate on the Visa card in your pocket? 20 percent? 23 percent
If you are living off of credit card debt, you have much bigger problems than the central bank's interest rates.
No, it doesn't, at least not if set up sensibly.
The average SS check is $1400, and many millions get more than that, up to $2500/month ... because they paid in much more over their working lifetime.
There is no plausible proposal for UBI that pays out that much. Most proposals are for about $500/month. So millions of people, retired and with no other income, will be worse off.
the human labor being wasted in the complex administration of these programs
Administration of SS and other entitlements is a minuscule portion of the costs of these programs. Far less than 1%.
And how much of that income is invested internationally, and thus outside of the national economy?
Net capital inflow is the mirror image of the trade deficit.
In 2017, $566B flowed out of America to pay for our net consumption of goods and services.
This means that $566B in net investment flowed INTO America.
Remember folks, if white people invent or discovered something, within a year Chinese "scholars" will find proof that they did it first.
Nobody is claiming that. Vaccination and innoculation (variolation) are two different things. Vaccination was discovered in England in 1798. Variolation was discovered in China in the 10th century. Both of these are backed up by contemporaneous historical records.
There are written records as early as 1721 of Americans being inoculated with variola, that specifically state that the technique was learned from Africans. That is 80 years before the cowpox vaccine was discovered in England.
The bailouts rescued the old system.
Indeed they did. But October 2008 was not the best time to do a redesign. When the lifeboat is sinking, you don't debate, you grab a bucket and start bailing.
The time for the redesign came later. The solution from the left was Sarbanes-Oxley. The solution from the right was more deregulation. I'm not sure which was worse.
So, why do we still have quantitative easing?
We don't. The Fed has not been a net buyer of treasury bonds for years. QE tapered to zero in 2014.
Isn't UBI then a tax on the labor of other then?
No. Most proposals for UBI pay for it with taxes on capital gains and carried interest, and a progressive income tax. Higher income people make much of their money from interest and dividends.
So in theory, it is mostly a tax on capital, not a tax on labor.
What is it always a plumber in these anecdotal stories from the Right...
Because plumbers are such an easy example to point out where there is clear demand, good pay, an accessible skill, and plenty of opportunity for anyone willing to work.
Many people need carpenters and electricians, but almost everyone eventually needs a plumber. When they realize how hard they are to find, and how well they are paid, it puts the lie to the liberal argument that "People can't find good jobs".
UBI is hand in hand with the surge of talk about Socialism, at least in the US.
Almost nobody in America is advocating for socialism. When progressives say "socialism", they mean European-style social democracy, which is a form of capitalism, and is NOT socialism.
Socialism means government ownership of the means of production. It has been tried many times, has never worked well, and has proved to be incompatible with democracy and basic human rights.
Capitalist countries: America, Denmark, Norway
Socialist countries: Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea
In the United States, we have had a rapidly growing money supply, based entirely on the Fed printing money, and it has not led to inflation.
This is misleading. The whole point of QE was to prevent a deflationary spiral in the aftermath of the financial crisis. So while it didn't lead to high inflation, it did lead to much higher inflation than we would have otherwise had.
In 2008, we came very close to another great depression, and it was QE, Obama's stimulus package, and yes, the unpopular but necessary bank bailout, that kept that from happening.
It comes from taxing those that are working at a given time. The $1000 is redistributed, not created from thin air.
High income people tend to invest much of their income, while lower income people tend to spend on immediate consumption.
So UBI will lead to more consumption and less investment and savings.
Last year, Americans consumed $566B more than we produced, with debt making up the difference. UBI will make this imbalance worse.
UBI is a safety net without the expensive part of qualifying people for different welfare programs. Nothing more or less.
It also screws over all the recipients of existing programs, because the benefits will have to be far lower if they are universal. So people that paid into Social Security for a lifetime lose most of their entitlements. Do you think that is even remotely politically plausible?
If you are mathematically clueless, you could say "Hey, just exclude Social Security". But once you exclude SS, there is no where near enough money for a meaningful UBI.
Here is a list of people that will get screwed by UBI:
1. The top 60%, who will pay more in new taxes than they receive in benefits.
2. The bottom 10% who are receiving more in benefits now than under UBI.
3. Anyone over 65 (16% of the population).
This is a strong super majority. How are you going to get these people to vote against their own interests?
Profit is a tax on the labor of others.
Then work for yourself. Learn a skill and put an ad on Craigslist. I hired a plumber from Craigslist last month for $70 an hour. Everyone else was either too busy or charging even more. There is plenty of opportunity for anyone willing to show up on time and do the work.
As a general rule of thumb, when a project is "90% complete" you are at about the halfway point in both time and resources.
I have only seen human sidewalk poo in the Tenderloin district and SOMA. It isn't that big of an issue. Dog poo is a bigger and more widespread problem.
The book seems silly and unfocused. Many of the people interviewed don't even live in SF and never have. Regis McKenna was based in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, a world away from the streets of SF. And a longshoreman? The longshoremen left SF 50 years ago when the container ports opened in Oakland. That had absolutely nothing to do with "tech companies".
SF's problems today are mostly political, with economically illiterate voters supporting both "no-growth" and "affordable housing", and then looking at tech as a scapegoat when they don't get the utopia they were promised.
Why is /. insanely cynical?
Saying that Saudi Arabia is a brutal repressive dictatorship is not cynical, it is just stating the obvious.
They murdered a journalist in Turkey.
They are waging war in Yemen against some of the poorest people on the planet.
They behead people for thought crimes.
They created the Taliban, and still fund extremist madrassas in Pakistan and Africa.
But they have plenty of oil, and they pay cash for their F35s, so allies the are.
Smallpox vaccine is made using cowpox. You do not need smallpox pathogens at all.
Centuries before Dr Jenner made the first vaccine from cowpox, the Chinese had developed inoculation using smallpox directly. Smallpox is most deadly when it infects the lungs first, suffocating the victim before any immunity develops. So the Chinese would take scabs from pustules, crush them up, and use a needle to poke it into the skin of uninfected people. This would cause a mild form of the disease with about a 2% mortality rate, far below the 30-50% rate from airborne infections, but induce full immunity.
The technique spread from China through the Islamic world to West Africa, and was taught to white Americans by African slaves.
Smallpox inoculation
Many of those fields are critical. Psychology for one is HUGE.
In college, psychology is a dumping ground for people that can't figure out what else to major in. The most common job for psychology majors a year after graduation is "Uber driver". I don't think these people should be our guiding lights.
The premise of TFA is silly:
1. STEM degrees require a lot of humanities courses.
2. There is no objective evidence that STEM people are less ethical or empathic than humanities majors.
3. Many of the decisions TFA talks about aren't made by the engineering department.
That the leader of Mozilla is focusing on crap like this explains much about the state of their software.
That's somewhere between 17x17 and 17x18, which makes it even more impressive.
The default image for Inception-V3 is 299x299 RGB = 89401 pixels.
The journalist is a moron. All he had to do was cut-and-paste, and he screwed it up.