It was written by a professional journalist, so what did you expect?
So, I didn't read it. Would anyone care to summarize properly?
Summary: Journalist thinks journalism matters.
Zuck going before congress makes the front page of the NYTimes, but that has very little to do with what is going on in the tech world. Just because a herd of journalists are all chasing the same story, that doesn't mean the story is important.
You can only transfer real dollars electronically if both parties have access to dollar denominated bank accounts in institutions that are recognized by SWIFT or the American bank routing system. This excludes most of the world. Even for those able to transact, fees will eat up much of the money for international transactions.
It is also difficult to use real dollars for transactions that involve contract escrow or counter-party risk. A blockchain makes those much easier.
Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean others won't benefit.
It turned out that less than 1.5% of people had to change their insurance plans
That is misleading. Obamacare only covers about 11 million Americans. The others are covered under employee plans, Medicare, Medicaid, or VA. 1.5% of Americans is 4.5 million, or about 40% of those covered.
But this was not really a "lie" anyway, since it is unlikely that Obama knew it was false when he said it.
I lived in Shanghai, and sat on the board of a Chinese youxiangongsi for several years. There are taxes on net income, and on value added (VAT). There is no tax on gross revenue.
it wasn't a lush rainforest before the industrial revolution/age of the automobile
No, but much of pre-industrial Arabia and North Africa was grassland. What is now the Sahara Desert was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
Desertification was driven partly by natural climate change over the millenia, but also by destructive agriculture and overgrazing. In recent decades, desertification has rapidly accelerated, and the most plausible explanation is AGW. The Sahara is expanding southward at a rate of 50 km per year. The Arabian Desert is also expanding and becoming dryer.
From the citation: Irrigated agriculture is the primary water consumer, with an average of around 60% of total water use
Also from the citation: Irrigation water is generally used in a wasteful manner, mainly through traditional flooding and furrow irrigation techniques and for cultivating low-value, high-water-consumption crops.
Buying wheat would be way cheaper than shipping ice 10,000 miles through equatorial seas. For every tonne of wheat, they need 4000 tonnes of fresh water. This is far above the world's average because of low humidity, high temperatures, and sandy soil. Nearly all of that needs to be supplied by irrigation.
Desalination costs about $0.50 per tonne (one cubic meter).
If they can move a 100M tonne berg for less than $50M, then it is may be more cost effective to use ice.
Desalination cost is very dependent on electricity cost, which retails for about $0.06 per kwh in Dubai. The wholesale price is likely about half that. Electricity is cheap because much of it is generated from oilfield NG that would otherwise be flared.
No. It is an idiotic idea. Most of the water in UAE is used for subsidized agriculture. Wheat (the local staple) does not naturally grow in deserts, so it needs lots and lots of expensive water.
Instead of importing millions of tons of water, they should be importing thousands of tons of wheat from countries with rain.
Typhoons form in the tropics and gain strength as they move away from the equator. Since Singapore is nearly right on the equator, typhoons are a non-issue.
A hurricane and a typhoon are two words for the same thing, depending on location. They are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. They are called typhoons in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean.
Tsunamis only go a few hundred meters inland.
Singapore is a 1st World country, with a per capita GDP of $58k, nearly identical to America. Their electricity infrastructure is rock solid.
I have been there several times. Beautiful city... err... country, very friendly people that all speak English, and lots of rules.
Sounds like a huge strain on Singapore's infrastructure for little return.
Datacenters pull steady power 24/7, with little reactance and good power factor. They don't put much undo strain on infrastructure.
Their switching power supplies have negative resistance, but as long as the provider is aware, that is not a problem. If the current is too high, they need to increase the voltage, rather than decrease as they would for a traditional resistive load following Ohm's Law.
They should never be allowed to gain enough power to start pushing their own political agendas
For a good laugh (or cry, if corruption makes you sad) read about American mohair subsidies.
This is proof that you don't have to be a Big Company to corrupt the political process. Mohair production is mostly on small independent farms. Their pointless and wasteful subsidies have persisted because they are so small, and barely noticeable in a trillion dollar spending bill.
I rent a spare bedroom on Airbnb. I joined a Facebook group for local people that do the same. We got organized when the county started considering new taxes and restrictions. We paid a part time lobbyist to get the proposed law watered down, and eventually it died without ever coming to a vote. People renting spare rooms are not big companies, but we were still successful at pushing our agenda.
People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
But did they lose any business because of it? They just put up some nets and the story went away.
The suicide story was fake news anyway. Foxconn employs 800,000 people, so there are going to be some suicides in a population that large. Foxconn's suicide rate is, and has always been, below what demographics would predict.
Interesting factoid: China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds the male rate.
There are a plethora of writing that productivity goes down with over-work
Yes, of course. This is just stating the obvious.
But that is NOT what the OP is claiming.
Look, lets say you hire a guy with a shovel to dig a hole. He works for 4 hours and removes 1 cubic meter per hour. Then he works another 4 hours, and he only removes 0.5 cubic meters per hour. Is that plausible? Sure. In fact, you would expect productivity to decline.
But now he digs for another 4 hours. But THE HOLE GETS SMALLER. His productivity becomes NEGATIVE.
But there is more: This happens systematically and predictably. Furthermore, there is a wealth of scientific literature that supports this claim. Published by Ford, AND OTHERS. Multiple studies.
But there is even more than that: For some reason NO ONE can find any of these studies. They have been erased from the libraries, and there is a vast right wing conspiracy to hide this knowledge. There is not a single link, or a single citation that anyone can provide.
So companies could be VASTLY more profitable simply by cutting hours. They would get MORE production at LOWER cost. If they need extra production, instead of asking people to work overtime, they could get the same result by sending them home early. But somehow they have never figured this out
Slashdot Mirror
The summary utterly failed to get to the point.
It was written by a professional journalist, so what did you expect?
So, I didn't read it. Would anyone care to summarize properly?
Summary: Journalist thinks journalism matters.
Zuck going before congress makes the front page of the NYTimes, but that has very little to do with what is going on in the tech world. Just because a herd of journalists are all chasing the same story, that doesn't mean the story is important.
Visa has a digital currency that is 1:1 with the US dollar, and it's a helluva lot more efficient.
Good luck buying heroin with your Visa card.
How do the Winklevoses cover operating expenses?
Float.
You are giving them an interest free loan of $10k.
They can make money by investing it.
It's still coining money even if the value is set to the dollar.
So do you "coin money" when you write a check?
This isn't for buying groceries.
You can only transfer real dollars electronically if both parties have access to dollar denominated bank accounts in institutions that are recognized by SWIFT or the American bank routing system. This excludes most of the world. Even for those able to transact, fees will eat up much of the money for international transactions.
It is also difficult to use real dollars for transactions that involve contract escrow or counter-party risk. A blockchain makes those much easier.
Just because YOU don't need it, doesn't mean others won't benefit.
More than half the people I know already have an Alexa. So I don't think half of households by 2019 is unrealistic at all.
If you have a smart phone, and you think Alexa is a bigger threat to your privacy, then you are delusional.
It turned out that less than 1.5% of people had to change their insurance plans
That is misleading. Obamacare only covers about 11 million Americans. The others are covered under employee plans, Medicare, Medicaid, or VA. 1.5% of Americans is 4.5 million, or about 40% of those covered.
But this was not really a "lie" anyway, since it is unlikely that Obama knew it was false when he said it.
The corporate tax rate in China is 40% of gross.
Bullcrap.
I lived in Shanghai, and sat on the board of a Chinese youxiangongsi for several years. There are taxes on net income, and on value added (VAT). There is no tax on gross revenue.
I mean really, $175k each..
That is likely 95% NRE. So one boat costs $175k, and each additional boat costs $5k.
Or speed. 24 miles per day is a very slow boat indeed.
It was WAY faster than that. This sailboat crossed the Atlantic on Sept 6th, and now has done it again in only THREE DAYS.
it wasn't a lush rainforest before the industrial revolution/age of the automobile
No, but much of pre-industrial Arabia and North Africa was grassland. What is now the Sahara Desert was once the breadbasket of the Roman Empire.
Desertification was driven partly by natural climate change over the millenia, but also by destructive agriculture and overgrazing. In recent decades, desertification has rapidly accelerated, and the most plausible explanation is AGW. The Sahara is expanding southward at a rate of 50 km per year. The Arabian Desert is also expanding and becoming dryer.
The best way to "green the desert", or at least slow down the browning, is to reduce CO2 emissions.
Zuck and his family will have to convert to Islam
Singapore is about 15% muslim.
IF they're growing grain with it, that is.
Water use in UAE
From the citation: Irrigated agriculture is the primary water consumer, with an average of around 60% of total water use
Also from the citation: Irrigation water is generally used in a wasteful manner, mainly through traditional flooding and furrow irrigation techniques and for cultivating low-value, high-water-consumption crops.
Well, that rain thing was this year extremely uneven distributed over the ares of the planet where you could grow wheat or rice ....
Wheat prices are a little above historic norms but not by much.
Buying wheat would be way cheaper than shipping ice 10,000 miles through equatorial seas. For every tonne of wheat, they need 4000 tonnes of fresh water. This is far above the world's average because of low humidity, high temperatures, and sandy soil. Nearly all of that needs to be supplied by irrigation.
Desalination costs about $0.50 per tonne (one cubic meter).
If they can move a 100M tonne berg for less than $50M, then it is may be more cost effective to use ice.
Desalination cost is very dependent on electricity cost, which retails for about $0.06 per kwh in Dubai. The wholesale price is likely about half that. Electricity is cheap because much of it is generated from oilfield NG that would otherwise be flared.
Disruption of the natural flow of hot & cold currents much?
Disruption of currents would be utterly negligible.
A far greater concern is the CO2 emissions from the fuel used by the tugboats.
They should use Skysails to tow the berg with wind power.
I mean .... is it ?
No. It is an idiotic idea. Most of the water in UAE is used for subsidized agriculture. Wheat (the local staple) does not naturally grow in deserts, so it needs lots and lots of expensive water.
Instead of importing millions of tons of water, they should be importing thousands of tons of wheat from countries with rain.
Typhoons form in the tropics and gain strength as they move away from the equator. Since Singapore is nearly right on the equator, typhoons are a non-issue.
A hurricane and a typhoon are two words for the same thing, depending on location. They are called hurricanes in the Atlantic and eastern Pacific. They are called typhoons in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean.
Tsunamis only go a few hundred meters inland.
Singapore is a 1st World country, with a per capita GDP of $58k, nearly identical to America. Their electricity infrastructure is rock solid.
I have been there several times. Beautiful city ... err ... country, very friendly people that all speak English, and lots of rules.
yeah but i bet that little bastard never did it again.
He left Singapore right after his caning, so he never faced the possibility of another caning.
Michael P. Fay
He was later arrested on drug and alcohol offenses in Florida.
Sounds like a huge strain on Singapore's infrastructure for little return .
Datacenters pull steady power 24/7, with little reactance and good power factor. They don't put much undo strain on infrastructure.
Their switching power supplies have negative resistance, but as long as the provider is aware, that is not a problem. If the current is too high, they need to increase the voltage, rather than decrease as they would for a traditional resistive load following Ohm's Law.
They should never be allowed to gain enough power to start pushing their own political agendas
For a good laugh (or cry, if corruption makes you sad) read about American mohair subsidies.
This is proof that you don't have to be a Big Company to corrupt the political process. Mohair production is mostly on small independent farms. Their pointless and wasteful subsidies have persisted because they are so small, and barely noticeable in a trillion dollar spending bill.
I rent a spare bedroom on Airbnb. I joined a Facebook group for local people that do the same. We got organized when the county started considering new taxes and restrictions. We paid a part time lobbyist to get the proposed law watered down, and eventually it died without ever coming to a vote. People renting spare rooms are not big companies, but we were still successful at pushing our agenda.
People committing suicide at Fox-con was really bad publicity for them.
But did they lose any business because of it? They just put up some nets and the story went away.
The suicide story was fake news anyway. Foxconn employs 800,000 people, so there are going to be some suicides in a population that large. Foxconn's suicide rate is, and has always been, below what demographics would predict.
Interesting factoid: China is the only country in the world where the female suicide rate exceeds the male rate.
There are a plethora of writing that productivity goes down with over-work
Yes, of course. This is just stating the obvious.
But that is NOT what the OP is claiming.
Look, lets say you hire a guy with a shovel to dig a hole. He works for 4 hours and removes 1 cubic meter per hour. Then he works another 4 hours, and he only removes 0.5 cubic meters per hour. Is that plausible? Sure. In fact, you would expect productivity to decline.
But now he digs for another 4 hours. But THE HOLE GETS SMALLER. His productivity becomes NEGATIVE.
But there is more: This happens systematically and predictably. Furthermore, there is a wealth of scientific literature that supports this claim. Published by Ford, AND OTHERS. Multiple studies.
But there is even more than that: For some reason NO ONE can find any of these studies. They have been erased from the libraries, and there is a vast right wing conspiracy to hide this knowledge. There is not a single link, or a single citation that anyone can provide.
So companies could be VASTLY more profitable simply by cutting hours. They would get MORE production at LOWER cost. If they need extra production, instead of asking people to work overtime, they could get the same result by sending them home early. But somehow they have never figured this out
Do you believe this?