I suppose now the larger question becomes a matter of tax burden; what will be the cost to a business that chooses autonomous solutions over giving humans jobs in order to fund UBI?
That's a good point, and something I hope we start to figure out soon.
once we have good-enough AI, it will be targeting highly educated and skilled positions as well
That's already happening, too. Medicine, law and other high profile, high status, well paid professions. Not quite to the same level as in this discussion where we're talking about 100% replacing the human worker. But if the smart search case law research algorithm can save the 20% of time an attorney spends doing research, he can do more of the other 80% of things he does. So where you used to need 5 lawyers, you might only need 4 now. Same kind of thing for, e.g. a radiologist. If an AI tool can help her do diagnoses much faster, maybe her hospital and/or the healthcare system in general needs fewer radiologists.
It will be interesting to see how our economy and future survives and thrives with these "cheap" solutions.
Indeed. I think a lot of people believe that "post scarcity" is just around the corner, but I think it will be a slower transition than many predict. The enabling tech is still advancing rapidly, but not at Moore's Law rates anymore. Hopefully, we are able to get some kind of UBI or other support system in place before widespread unemployment becomes a critical issue.
That's when you get yellow sticky notes on the monitor.
Certain people will probably always do that. But good password managers have been around for a while, and can easily accommodate such requirements. If anyone is unaware of those types of tools, that's probably a failing of their IT department for not having or properly communicating a standard for password management.
Tell me again how the hell autonomous solutions are worth it from a business perspective?
Not the OP, but thought I'd share a different perspective on this. Putting aside, for the moment, your cost estimates for autonomous vehicles (I'll come back to that), let's look at it from the other side. A $10/hour wage is going to cost the employer somewhere between $14-20/per hour by the time you factor in taxes, insurance (worker's comp and unemployment, I believe, are mandatory throughout the U.S., and as you mentioned, liability insurance), plus the additional fees paid to drivers for their gas/mileage/maintenance, etc.... I may be low-balling a bit, but let's call it $16/hour. And the dominoes nearby whose hours I looked at says they're open from 10:30am to 1am daily, which seems fairly typical -- 14.5 hours per day, 7 days a week comes to 5278 hours per year, but if we consider some holidays and early closing days, let's round it down to 5100. With our $16/hour number, that's $81,600 in costs avoided per year. For having one vehicle, available any time the location is open.
Now, as for your estimates. Non-fuel costs (tires, oil, preventative maintenance) for fleet vehicles tend to run well under $100/per month even for very high mileage vehicles, but let's call it $100 since small business owners may not have all the advantages of a large fleet operation. Now, if we assume a high utilization rate of 50% (driving time) and a high average speed of 20mph, that gives us about 51000 miles per year. At 25mpg (probably on the low side), that's 2040 gallons of gas. At the current national average of $2.528, that's $5157.12 in fuel costs, or $6357.12 when combined with maintenance. Even if that's off by 100%, and the vehicle cost is $30K or more, compared to the $81K driver cost, it's still a big savings in the first year. Other considerations that might offer less obvious advantages include tax treatment of the expenditures (capital and operating expenses vs. payroll) and depreciation.
Of course, that's the best case scenario, where we're comparing the maximum cost for having one driver available during all open hours. But it's obviously not a binary choice, in which a location has to have all autonomous vehicle or all human employee drivers. We won't even get into the discussion of whether the vehicle has to be a "car" in the normal sense, since it only has to carry food, not passengers.
So the question is: where will these 3 million people charge their EVs?
Not really. A variety of services are indirectly (communication and delivery services that reduce the need/desire to go places) and directly (such as ride hailing apps, e.g. Uber and Lyft, car sharing services like zipcar) reducing the need to own a car, with the trend likely to continue downward. I seriously doubt your urban population has anywhere close to 100% car ownership currently with gas vehicles, so why hold EVs to that standard?
Even if your property manager could provide a charging unit, how would it be metered and billed to you?
There are already a number of solutions available. For instance, a company called chargepoint installs and manages charging stations for office buildings, retail businesses, apartment/condo complexes, etc... as well as private homes. Blink charging provides similar services. Probably others as well. It's really not as challenging as you make it out to be. You're probably better off not owning a car in high density areas, but if there is reserved parking, charging can be accommodated.
Yes, there are a number of things that affect elderly people such that they cannot or should not drive -- vision impairment, as you noted, and even just declining ability to react quickly enough to safely operate a vehicle.
Those factors, combined with attributes of a retirement community like the Villages, such as being a somewhat isolated environment, moderate traffic, better than average signage and road markings, somewhat favorable weather (e.g. they're often in places with no snow), etc... make it a good place for rolling out early versions of fully autonomous vehicles.
Florida has for years had lax requirements for driver's licenses to cater to the large retiree population, allowing many drivers to keep driving privileges long after their reduced physical or mental abilities have made it a safety issue. Self driving cars provide a way for those who should not be on the road to keep freedom of movement with respect to personal transportation without the safety risks inherent is just letting them keep their driving privileges. As a result, I expect states like Florida and Arizona (the old and new favored destinations to retire to) to be early adopters of laws friendly to autonomous vehicles. Also California, with the largest number of elderly (though near the bottom percentage-wise)
combined with the tech-friendliness due to being the home of silicon valley.
And I agree. There are plenty of things I'd rather spend my attention on than driving.
Not buying one will not help with most people's privacy concerns.
There is no real expectation of privacy when in public, already. That's not changing. In your own home, where people tend to have the greatest expectation and desire for privacy, obviously not buying a device with a built-in voice assistant is a perfectly reasonable and effective solution against being listened to by a voice assistant. In the homes of others, you can still make your own decisions about how much you want to participate by either not voicing anything you wish to keep private, or just not going to someone's home who uses such devices.
But if we're being honest, privacy is mostly illusory these days before even considering Alexa and similar services. There are some things you can do to try to preserve it, but privacy is already pretty much gone. Your ISP knows what you do online. Unless you use a VPN service, in which case, they know what you do online. Your phone carrier can track you location, even (though less precisely) if you don't use a smart phone. Your bank/card issuer knows where and how you spend your money. And so on.
We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Let's abstract that away from a politically charged topic and see if it holds up, shall we?
We can't have a situation where a single data point is used to try to refute a trend across a large data set.
That part seems fine.
When a specific data point can be shown to be influenced by trends in the larger data set, it is acceptable to state that.
That seems fine, too. Are you suggesting that when individual events are shown with a high degree of confidence to be influenced by the larger trend, it should be ignored or suppressed? That sounds more like a situation where politically motivated individuals should leave the science alone.
Amazingly, you can actually sell a house. They even have people who make a living selling and buying houses!
I think you inadvertently hit on something here that is counter to your point. Obviously, there are costs to selling, and not just the direct closing costs. OP is obviously wrong, of course. There are certainly cases where it is financially sound to buy rather than rent. But it's also wrong to claim that it is always better to buy. It varies based on many factors, but a common rule of thumb is (or used to be) that it's typically not cost effective to buy if you intend to move/sell in less than 7 years (though I have been seeing 5 years as the guideline more often of late).
The real answer is to consider your local markets (rentals and sales), total costs in either scenario, your housing needs/wants, and your personal situation and do a cost/benefit analysis based on your specifics.
Your attempts at bringing in other analogous examples of the same argument
FTFY. Your argument was: "I didn't, so they shouldn't" and it has no more merit when applied to phones than any other thing that can improve safety, even if only in rare circumstances.
If the parent is that concerned then they can accompany the child.
Or take advantage of other options that accomplish at least part of the goal of monitoring the child's whereabouts and condition.
If they need to reach them at school then they can do so through the administration of the school. If they are concerned about the transit to/from then accompany them. I reject the premise of your argument.
Regardless of your perception, a phone is a perfectly valid way to reach a child and know his location.
A phone won't fix actual problems and I'm not going to pretend that it will.
But you are pretending, because a phone does in fact fix the problems of: parent and child having no way to communicate while the child is walking to or from school; no way for the child to summon emergency assistance should it be necessary (for instance, the nine year old who recently called 911 to aid her bus driver who became suddenly ill; there was also one where a 6th grader called 911 for a fellow student who OD'd in an apparent suicide attempt); and parent not knowing whether the child is where he is supposed to be or not.
[A phone] does essentially nothing to actually keep a child safe in all but the rarest of circumstances.
So, a phone doesn't do much, except in rare cases. Meaning your position is that "nothing" (i.e. not having a phone) is better than the "not much" benefit a phone provides. And when something really unusual comes up, and then it's better to just let 'em die (or suffer whatever other rare consequences might occur) than give them a phone?
I never had a cell phone as a child and yet somehow I survived the fiery apocalypse.
That right there is a bullshit argument. Test it out with some other then/now comparison to see for yourself, e.g.
We never had airbags/carseats/bike helmets when I was a child, so why do we need them now?
and
Grandpappy didn't have seatbelts when he was a child, so requiring them in cars now isn't necessary.
I'm sure we could come up with many more examples that illustrate the fact that "I didn't have it, so kids today should not, either" is a nonsensical argument. There is simply no question that there are safety advantages to having a phone available (obvious ones being the ability to call 911 in an emergency, or call someone else for a less serious issue, etc....) "Not necessary" does not mean "not valuable".
Children old enough to drive can leave the phone in the car
I don't know where you are but where I live, they don't hand out cars (or even licenses) to every kid when they turn 16. So that's not exactly a broadly applicable solution.
If a parent is worried about their child's safety, a phone isn't going to solve that problem.
That depends on what the concerns are, doesn't it? Obviously, a phone doesn't grant the holder invulnerability, but it can certainly ameliorate some common worries (like not knowing where the child is, not being able to reach them, etc....)
The parent should be with the child if they are worried about them.
And yet, most parents can't be with a school-age child 24/7. If only there was a way to ameliorate some common worries that parents often have.... Personally, I'm not a fan of giving kids a phone before middle school age or so, but if the child is walking to and from school before that, I can see the reasoning for it.
"It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses," Bessen told me.
That seems like a very short-sighted assessment. It's understandable that more efficient ordering can lead to increased sales, resulting in more demand for other positions that offset the decreased need for order-takers. But I'm not sure why one would assume those other positions are immune to automation, or that growth can continue at such a rate that the dwindling number of positions that need a human worker will continue to support the same staffing levels as before automation.
The major assumption is that most productive work done is full-time.
No such assumption is made (by me) or required. Full time work simply provides a basis for comparing time spent working vs. productive time.
Problem is service work is 100% productive
That's not what "productive" means, particularly in this context where we are talking about income/wealth produced relative to hours worked. It may be necessary to have that coverage, but if there are no customers during an hour, no revenue (nor profit nor wealth) is produced during that time, so you could hardly say that a worker working during that time was productive (of course, it is possible to do work that has some value during that time.
But yes, a reduction of work actually performed by 20% will result in 20% less wealth.
Again, this is only true if the work that is no longer being done produces at least the mean value of wealth per unit of work. Surely it does not need to be explained that not all work produces equal wealth? Although I should point out that wealth is the wrong word here. Income would be more accurate, and you could perhaps use GDP to describe it in terms of a nationwide aggregate. Even that is not fully accurate, since productive work is obviously not the only source of income possible.
In a population which works 20% less, 20% less is produced, and wealth drops by 20%.
Possible, but unlikely. If you mean that 20% less work is actually done, perhaps. But only if the 20% of work not being done is average with respect to the wealth it produces. However, working 20% fewer hours does not mean less work will get done. Some research mentioned in the article indicates that office workers spend less than 3 hours per workday actually doing productive work.It also mentions that the then-standard 10 hour workday was changed to 8 hours early in the 20th century because it made workers more productive -- not just on a per hour basis, but overall. So working fewer hours might actually increase productivity (some research has show this, but how broadly applicable it is is undetermined). And the Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule, which has been borne out in many, many domains) indicates that we could very likely keep similar levels of productivity with much less time spent on work.
I'm not sure why you would think that, since we have gone from 12-14+ hour workdays (six days a week) being typical to today's standard of 8 hours per day for 5 days.
Of course, many people work outside the standard, working more or fewer days and more or fewer hours -- some due to unusual job requirements, some due to necessity resulting from low wages, some simply to have more, like the theoretical case you described. But 40 hours is now the standard and around 47 is the average put in by U.S. full-time workers (spent on the job, though most don't actually work the entire time they are at work). It obviously has not crept back up to historical levels, even though history clearly shows that people can work those kinds of schedules.
Are you sure? I mean, are you SCIENTIFICALLY sure about that point?
From TFA: "Using lab-grown mosquitoes to kill mosquito pests has been tested extensively in Brazil in recent years. [emphasis mine]" A number of other tests -- for specifically this method, and similar ones -- are mentioned as well, so I'm going to go with "Yes" in answer to your question.
I'm not sure why you think this is being approved for widespread use (somewhat anyway. But still limited to areas with temperature and precipitation conditions to areas where it was successfully tested within the U.S.) without adequate testing. It is not as if it is going from concept directly to broad approval.
Not only because it's an obvious shill for their particular technology
Like Google providing materials and lesson plans based on Scratch, "a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at http://scratch.mit.edu/"? Those monsters!
in some instances politically charged
Yeah, the example they give of changing the color of a letter in the logo. Obviously racist, right?
Damn big businesses, offering free educational resources to teachers and schools. What kind of world are we creating when we expose kids to STEM concepts at a young age? Oh, the humanities!
how on Earth is going the EPA and US to control that such kind of hybrids
Well, first of all, these are not "hybrids". They are just regular mosquitoes carrying a bacteria that regularly infects mosquitoes already. So, done?
doesn't invade another countries like Canada or Mexico?
What the bacteria does is make the male mosquito sterile, so that when he mates with a female in the wild, instead of producing thousands of new mosquitoes they just make thousands of eggs that don't develop. I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about the eggs migrating to other countries. And since male mosquitoes (the only ones being infected and released) only live about ten days, the risk of them travelling across borders seems fairly small. And if they do, their tenancy as illegal aliens of other countries will be quite short-lived. And, since the treatment they receive sterilizes them, they will have no foreign-born offspring disrupting the existing mosquito populations of other countries, taking their jobs, getting on mosquito welfare, or whatever.
Safety is number 1. Having autonomous driving systems that never get tired or distracted, always obey traffic laws, and in the event of unsafe circumstances (e.g. person or animal running onto the road, blowout or other mechanical failure on another vehicle, or error by a human driver) are able to react faster than humanly possible will save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce property damage.
If you're in the car going somewhere then why not drive it yourself?
Most people have many things they would rather do than drive. Having the car do the driving frees you up to do work during your commute -- e.g., answer emails and whatnot, the type of thing one might normally do first thing upon arriving at the office -- potentially shortening your workday, or to enjoy entertainment options that you normally could not while driving. And of course, if you are out somewhere having a few drinks, it is much safer not to drive yourself home while intoxicated.
I wonder how well the global economy will cope when haulage, taxi services, busses... trains... all need no people.
Another benefit, since that will bring down the cost for all those services. The jobs lost will be a problem, which the article attempts to address.
And what happens when a deer decides to bolt out from the woods in front of your vehicle?
Most likely, the computer system detects it more quickly than a person would, reacts faster than humanly possible, and brakes and/or steers in an optimized way to avoid both collision and loss of control.That kind of scenario is one where automated systems easily beat humans. The concerning ones are when visibility is poor, or lane markings are bad or confusing, such as in inclement weather or construction zones.
just hire Disney's engineers and building a fucking monorail in most cities and connect them to the suburbs
A train line is great if all the places you want to go are in a nice line. And we could certainly use better mass transit many places in the U.S. But it's only a partial replacement for driving, particularly with most cities/metro areas being laid out (or sprawled out, as it were) with cars in mind as the primary mode of transportation. Self driving vehicles are a more complete solution (even if they fall short of 100%) and much more cost effective when you consider that developing self-driving vehicles involves perhaps a dozen companies* conducting billion or multi-billion dollar projects vs. 5-10 dozen metro areas** (just in the U.S.) conducting multi-billion to tens of billion dollar projects to deploy light rail that would cover a fraction of the population over more limited use cases.
For better or worse, the U.S. has a car- and truck-centric transportation culture. If we were starting from scratch, it might make more sense to do things differently. But as it is, we have to work from the infrastructure we already have. Which means making driving better. A good way to do that is to remove humans from the equation as much as possible since human error is the cause of nearly all traffic accidents.
Plus, lots of people need to drive on a regular basis (daily commutes, etc...),
and generally don't enjoy it. So having someone (something) else do the driving is an upgrade for most people. Especially if there is no trade-off with the other up aspects of driving -- departing when you choose, making additional stops as desired, privacy and personal space, ability to carry around an amount of stuff that would be prohibitive on public transit, and store things in the vehicle, etc....
* With other companies buying components or licensing tech from the makers that do the best
** The U.S. has 382 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, over 100 of which have at least half a million population, and more than 50 of which have a million or more.
All those things people wish for (AI, good VR, etc) aren't going to happen.
I wouldn't go that far. Just because computing power, or transistor density to be more specific, is no longer doubling every 24 months does not mean progress has stopped, or will soon. It just means things don't get better and cheaper as fast as they have in recent decades. The other side of the coin that makes it seem like we're at a dead end is that processing power is finally good enough in the last several years that the current software doesn't just suck up all the resources as soon as they're available. In other words, it's not that new machines are not significantly more powerful than the ones from 5, 6, 7 years ago. It's that the power of the older machines is good enough that for many uses, the extra power is not all that noticeable.
Tech keeps advancing, and tech companies keep putting out new and (sometimes) improved products.
There are some people -- call them aficionados, technophiles, early adopters, hardcore gamers, audio nerds, fanboys, [fill in the blank] -- who will always buy the latest and greatest offering in a given market segment. And there will also be people (generally, a much larger proportion compared to the gotta-have-the-latest types) who wait for the second or third generation when many of the early kinks have been worked out and the price has dropped. And then they hold onto the thing for several years/product cycles before upgrading.
With respect to the new Xbox, the more incremental update is just a sign that gaming consoles are getting to be more mature tech . Nothing really new in that regard. That's how technology products often progress. As for tech in general, we perhaps have more things or at least more choices now, so maybe it feels like there is more to keep up with. But there is really no obligation to have one of everything, nevermind having the latest of everything.
I don't know whether most work requires physical presence. Perhaps. Certainly there is quite a lot that can be done without it -- far less than is currently being done remotely. There may be some debate about what is most effective, but that depends on too many variables to make a blanket statement, IMO. Call center work, for instance is a great candidate for remote workers where the option is probably under-utilized. The software used already tracks all the details of when the worker is online (if he starts on time, is available to take calls for long enough, how long his breaks are, etc...), call time and resolution metrics, sales if applicable, etc.... So the aspect of monitoring employees or knowing how much working is getting done does not really apply. It's largely solitary work, so there is generally little need for collaboration. The exception might be if junior-level or first line support frequently need assistance from a supervisor or more senior person. But it seems more typical that in such a case, the junior level person simply transfers the call to another person or department to escalate the issue, rather than getting in-person guidance from the senior person.
Something else that may be worth mentioning is that many employers who disallow remote work for employees are perfectly fine with it when it is convenient to the employer. When they want you to take a call or respond to an email or deal with an issue after hours/on the weekend/during vacation? Working remotely is obviously ok in those situations. If an employee wants to work from home for their own convenience, though, it might be a different story. Obviously, there is a lot of middle ground, and many employers allow varying amounts of leeway regarding how frequently one can work remotely. But I did want to point out the potential hypocrisy that many people have likely experienced.
now "Divisive" ads. Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie
Divisive just means divisive. That can include driving Bernie supporters away from the polls or away from the democrat establishment. It can also include dividing the country by race, for those who are into that kind of thing.
> And 80k from Russians is a big issue vs a billion?
Not sure if you are trying to say that the 80,000 posts that facebook says were created or promoted by Russia-linked accounts cost a dollar each to create/promote/whatever, or if you're intentionally or accidentally conflating "posts" with dollars, but there are a few ways that a small-ish number of political posts could have an outsized impact. For one, by not being constrained by at least having a basis in fact, they can make any claim they want. This has the effect of both creating pressure on the campaign and/or legitimate organizations to play whack-a-mole putting down the false statements and rumors (where the name "Correct the Record" came from) and anchoring a narrative in the minds of many voters. It can also be used to move the dialog in more extreme directions, especially with the highly targeted way it is possible to deliver on social media.
If you are still blaming Russia for Trumps win, you still haven't learned
There is little doubt that it was a factor. Mostly likely not the deciding factor, but how big or small remains to be seen. The actual margin of victory was quite small -- around 120K votes across three states out of 129 million (nationwide) cast could have flipped the electoral vote.
This two party system is a problem
That's true. Unfortunately, the two parties with all the power are the ones that set the rules that make the system a two party system. Obviously, that makes it very difficult to change, since it means those two parties would have to voluntarily give up power.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose now the larger question becomes a matter of tax burden; what will be the cost to a business that chooses autonomous solutions over giving humans jobs in order to fund UBI?
That's a good point, and something I hope we start to figure out soon.
once we have good-enough AI, it will be targeting highly educated and skilled positions as well
That's already happening, too. Medicine, law and other high profile, high status, well paid professions. Not quite to the same level as in this discussion where we're talking about 100% replacing the human worker. But if the smart search case law research algorithm can save the 20% of time an attorney spends doing research, he can do more of the other 80% of things he does. So where you used to need 5 lawyers, you might only need 4 now. Same kind of thing for, e.g. a radiologist. If an AI tool can help her do diagnoses much faster, maybe her hospital and/or the healthcare system in general needs fewer radiologists.
It will be interesting to see how our economy and future survives and thrives with these "cheap" solutions.
Indeed. I think a lot of people believe that "post scarcity" is just around the corner, but I think it will be a slower transition than many predict. The enabling tech is still advancing rapidly, but not at Moore's Law rates anymore. Hopefully, we are able to get some kind of UBI or other support system in place before widespread unemployment becomes a critical issue.
These are not patrol cars. They're for administrative staff usage.
That's when you get yellow sticky notes on the monitor.
Certain people will probably always do that. But good password managers have been around for a while, and can easily accommodate such requirements. If anyone is unaware of those types of tools, that's probably a failing of their IT department for not having or properly communicating a standard for password management.
Tell me again how the hell autonomous solutions are worth it from a business perspective?
Not the OP, but thought I'd share a different perspective on this. Putting aside, for the moment, your cost estimates for autonomous vehicles (I'll come back to that), let's look at it from the other side. A $10/hour wage is going to cost the employer somewhere between $14-20/per hour by the time you factor in taxes, insurance (worker's comp and unemployment, I believe, are mandatory throughout the U.S., and as you mentioned, liability insurance), plus the additional fees paid to drivers for their gas/mileage/maintenance, etc.... I may be low-balling a bit, but let's call it $16/hour. And the dominoes nearby whose hours I looked at says they're open from 10:30am to 1am daily, which seems fairly typical -- 14.5 hours per day, 7 days a week comes to 5278 hours per year, but if we consider some holidays and early closing days, let's round it down to 5100. With our $16/hour number, that's $81,600 in costs avoided per year. For having one vehicle, available any time the location is open.
Now, as for your estimates. Non-fuel costs (tires, oil, preventative maintenance) for fleet vehicles tend to run well under $100/per month even for very high mileage vehicles, but let's call it $100 since small business owners may not have all the advantages of a large fleet operation. Now, if we assume a high utilization rate of 50% (driving time) and a high average speed of 20mph, that gives us about 51000 miles per year. At 25mpg (probably on the low side), that's 2040 gallons of gas. At the current national average of $2.528, that's $5157.12 in fuel costs, or $6357.12 when combined with maintenance. Even if that's off by 100%, and the vehicle cost is $30K or more, compared to the $81K driver cost, it's still a big savings in the first year. Other considerations that might offer less obvious advantages include tax treatment of the expenditures (capital and operating expenses vs. payroll) and depreciation.
Of course, that's the best case scenario, where we're comparing the maximum cost for having one driver available during all open hours. But it's obviously not a binary choice, in which a location has to have all autonomous vehicle or all human employee drivers. We won't even get into the discussion of whether the vehicle has to be a "car" in the normal sense, since it only has to carry food, not passengers.
So the question is: where will these 3 million people charge their EVs?
Not really. A variety of services are indirectly (communication and delivery services that reduce the need/desire to go places) and directly (such as ride hailing apps, e.g. Uber and Lyft, car sharing services like zipcar) reducing the need to own a car, with the trend likely to continue downward. I seriously doubt your urban population has anywhere close to 100% car ownership currently with gas vehicles, so why hold EVs to that standard?
Even if your property manager could provide a charging unit, how would it be metered and billed to you?
There are already a number of solutions available. For instance, a company called chargepoint installs and manages charging stations for office buildings, retail businesses, apartment/condo complexes, etc... as well as private homes. Blink charging provides similar services. Probably others as well. It's really not as challenging as you make it out to be. You're probably better off not owning a car in high density areas, but if there is reserved parking, charging can be accommodated.
Yes, there are a number of things that affect elderly people such that they cannot or should not drive -- vision impairment, as you noted, and even just declining ability to react quickly enough to safely operate a vehicle.
Those factors, combined with attributes of a retirement community like the Villages, such as being a somewhat isolated environment, moderate traffic, better than average signage and road markings, somewhat favorable weather (e.g. they're often in places with no snow), etc... make it a good place for rolling out early versions of fully autonomous vehicles.
Florida has for years had lax requirements for driver's licenses to cater to the large retiree population, allowing many drivers to keep driving privileges long after their reduced physical or mental abilities have made it a safety issue. Self driving cars provide a way for those who should not be on the road to keep freedom of movement with respect to personal transportation without the safety risks inherent is just letting them keep their driving privileges. As a result, I expect states like Florida and Arizona (the old and new favored destinations to retire to) to be early adopters of laws friendly to autonomous vehicles. Also California, with the largest number of elderly (though near the bottom percentage-wise) combined with the tech-friendliness due to being the home of silicon valley.
And I agree. There are plenty of things I'd rather spend my attention on than driving.
Not buying one will not help with most people's privacy concerns.
There is no real expectation of privacy when in public, already. That's not changing. In your own home, where people tend to have the greatest expectation and desire for privacy, obviously not buying a device with a built-in voice assistant is a perfectly reasonable and effective solution against being listened to by a voice assistant. In the homes of others, you can still make your own decisions about how much you want to participate by either not voicing anything you wish to keep private, or just not going to someone's home who uses such devices.
But if we're being honest, privacy is mostly illusory these days before even considering Alexa and similar services. There are some things you can do to try to preserve it, but privacy is already pretty much gone.
Your ISP knows what you do online. Unless you use a VPN service, in which case, they know what you do online.
Your phone carrier can track you location, even (though less precisely) if you don't use a smart phone.
Your bank/card issuer knows where and how you spend your money.
And so on.
Alexa, wipe my ass
You joke, but the "smart toilet" mentioned has a bidet, so kinda.
We can't have a situation where every time some political hack carries snowballs into congress to make a point it is rightfully dismissed as crackpot antics. Yet when there is a specific incident on the other side of the ledger be a storm or heat wave it becomes acceptable to try and publically link instances of weather to "climate change".
Let's abstract that away from a politically charged topic and see if it holds up, shall we?
We can't have a situation where a single data point is used to try to refute a trend across a large data set.
That part seems fine.
When a specific data point can be shown to be influenced by trends in the larger data set, it is acceptable to state that.
That seems fine, too. Are you suggesting that when individual events are shown with a high degree of confidence to be influenced by the larger trend, it should be ignored or suppressed? That sounds more like a situation where politically motivated individuals should leave the science alone.
Amazingly, you can actually sell a house. They even have people who make a living selling and buying houses!
I think you inadvertently hit on something here that is counter to your point. Obviously, there are costs to selling, and not just the direct closing costs. OP is obviously wrong, of course. There are certainly cases where it is financially sound to buy rather than rent. But it's also wrong to claim that it is always better to buy. It varies based on many factors, but a common rule of thumb is (or used to be) that it's typically not cost effective to buy if you intend to move/sell in less than 7 years (though I have been seeing 5 years as the guideline more often of late).
The real answer is to consider your local markets (rentals and sales), total costs in either scenario, your housing needs/wants, and your personal situation and do a cost/benefit analysis based on your specifics.
Your attempts at bringing in other analogous examples of the same argument
FTFY. Your argument was: "I didn't, so they shouldn't" and it has no more merit when applied to phones than any other thing that can improve safety, even if only in rare circumstances.
If the parent is that concerned then they can accompany the child.
Or take advantage of other options that accomplish at least part of the goal of monitoring the child's whereabouts and condition.
If they need to reach them at school then they can do so through the administration of the school. If they are concerned about the transit to/from then accompany them. I reject the premise of your argument.
Regardless of your perception, a phone is a perfectly valid way to reach a child and know his location.
A phone won't fix actual problems and I'm not going to pretend that it will.
But you are pretending, because a phone does in fact fix the problems of: parent and child having no way to communicate while the child is walking to or from school; no way for the child to summon emergency assistance should it be necessary (for instance, the nine year old who recently called 911 to aid her bus driver who became suddenly ill; there was also one where a 6th grader called 911 for a fellow student who OD'd in an apparent suicide attempt); and parent not knowing whether the child is where he is supposed to be or not.
[A phone] does essentially nothing to actually keep a child safe in all but the rarest of circumstances.
So, a phone doesn't do much, except in rare cases. Meaning your position is that "nothing" (i.e. not having a phone) is better than the "not much" benefit a phone provides. And when something really unusual comes up, and then it's better to just let 'em die (or suffer whatever other rare consequences might occur) than give them a phone?
I never had a cell phone as a child and yet somehow I survived the fiery apocalypse.
That right there is a bullshit argument. Test it out with some other then/now comparison to see for yourself, e.g.
We never had airbags/carseats/bike helmets when I was a child, so why do we need them now?
and
Grandpappy didn't have seatbelts when he was a child, so requiring them in cars now isn't necessary.
I'm sure we could come up with many more examples that illustrate the fact that "I didn't have it, so kids today should not, either" is a nonsensical argument. There is simply no question that there are safety advantages to having a phone available (obvious ones being the ability to call 911 in an emergency, or call someone else for a less serious issue, etc....) "Not necessary" does not mean "not valuable".
Children old enough to drive can leave the phone in the car
I don't know where you are but where I live, they don't hand out cars (or even licenses) to every kid when they turn 16. So that's not exactly a broadly applicable solution.
If a parent is worried about their child's safety, a phone isn't going to solve that problem.
That depends on what the concerns are, doesn't it? Obviously, a phone doesn't grant the holder invulnerability, but it can certainly ameliorate some common worries (like not knowing where the child is, not being able to reach them, etc....)
The parent should be with the child if they are worried about them.
And yet, most parents can't be with a school-age child 24/7. If only there was a way to ameliorate some common worries that parents often have.... Personally, I'm not a fan of giving kids a phone before middle school age or so, but if the child is walking to and from school before that, I can see the reasoning for it.
"It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses," Bessen told me.
That seems like a very short-sighted assessment. It's understandable that more efficient ordering can lead to increased sales, resulting in more demand for other positions that offset the decreased need for order-takers. But I'm not sure why one would assume those other positions are immune to automation, or that growth can continue at such a rate that the dwindling number of positions that need a human worker will continue to support the same staffing levels as before automation.
The major assumption is that most productive work done is full-time.
No such assumption is made (by me) or required. Full time work simply provides a basis for comparing time spent working vs. productive time.
Problem is service work is 100% productive
That's not what "productive" means, particularly in this context where we are talking about income/wealth produced relative to hours worked. It may be necessary to have that coverage, but if there are no customers during an hour, no revenue (nor profit nor wealth) is produced during that time, so you could hardly say that a worker working during that time was productive (of course, it is possible to do work that has some value during that time.
But yes, a reduction of work actually performed by 20% will result in 20% less wealth.
Again, this is only true if the work that is no longer being done produces at least the mean value of wealth per unit of work. Surely it does not need to be explained that not all work produces equal wealth? Although I should point out that wealth is the wrong word here. Income would be more accurate, and you could perhaps use GDP to describe it in terms of a nationwide aggregate. Even that is not fully accurate, since productive work is obviously not the only source of income possible.
In a population which works 20% less, 20% less is produced, and wealth drops by 20%.
Possible, but unlikely. If you mean that 20% less work is actually done, perhaps. But only if the 20% of work not being done is average with respect to the wealth it produces. However, working 20% fewer hours does not mean less work will get done. Some research mentioned in the article indicates that office workers spend less than 3 hours per workday actually doing productive work.It also mentions that the then-standard 10 hour workday was changed to 8 hours early in the 20th century because it made workers more productive -- not just on a per hour basis, but overall. So working fewer hours might actually increase productivity (some research has show this, but how broadly applicable it is is undetermined). And the Pareto Principle (AKA the 80/20 rule, which has been borne out in many, many domains) indicates that we could very likely keep similar levels of productivity with much less time spent on work.
I'm not sure why you would think that, since we have gone from 12-14+ hour workdays (six days a week) being typical to today's standard of 8 hours per day for 5 days.
Of course, many people work outside the standard, working more or fewer days and more or fewer hours -- some due to unusual job requirements, some due to necessity resulting from low wages, some simply to have more, like the theoretical case you described. But 40 hours is now the standard and around 47 is the average put in by U.S. full-time workers (spent on the job, though most don't actually work the entire time they are at work). It obviously has not crept back up to historical levels, even though history clearly shows that people can work those kinds of schedules.
Are you sure? I mean, are you SCIENTIFICALLY sure about that point?
From TFA: "Using lab-grown mosquitoes to kill mosquito pests has been tested extensively in Brazil in recent years. [emphasis mine]" A number of other tests -- for specifically this method, and similar ones -- are mentioned as well, so I'm going to go with "Yes" in answer to your question.
I'm not sure why you think this is being approved for widespread use (somewhat anyway. But still limited to areas with temperature and precipitation conditions to areas where it was successfully tested within the U.S.) without adequate testing. It is not as if it is going from concept directly to broad approval.
Not only because it's an obvious shill for their particular technology
Like Google providing materials and lesson plans based on Scratch, "a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab. It is available for free at http://scratch.mit.edu/"? Those monsters!
in some instances politically charged
Yeah, the example they give of changing the color of a letter in the logo. Obviously racist, right?
Damn big businesses, offering free educational resources to teachers and schools. What kind of world are we creating when we expose kids to STEM concepts at a young age? Oh, the humanities!
how on Earth is going the EPA and US to control that such kind of hybrids
Well, first of all, these are not "hybrids". They are just regular mosquitoes carrying a bacteria that regularly infects mosquitoes already. So, done?
doesn't invade another countries like Canada or Mexico?
What the bacteria does is make the male mosquito sterile, so that when he mates with a female in the wild, instead of producing thousands of new mosquitoes they just make thousands of eggs that don't develop. I'm pretty sure we don't have to worry about the eggs migrating to other countries. And since male mosquitoes (the only ones being infected and released) only live about ten days, the risk of them travelling across borders seems fairly small. And if they do, their tenancy as illegal aliens of other countries will be quite short-lived. And, since the treatment they receive sterilizes them, they will have no foreign-born offspring disrupting the existing mosquito populations of other countries, taking their jobs, getting on mosquito welfare, or whatever.
... what benefits? Legitimate question.
Safety is number 1. Having autonomous driving systems that never get tired or distracted, always obey traffic laws, and in the event of unsafe circumstances (e.g. person or animal running onto the road, blowout or other mechanical failure on another vehicle, or error by a human driver) are able to react faster than humanly possible will save lives, prevent injuries, and reduce property damage.
If you're in the car going somewhere then why not drive it yourself?
Most people have many things they would rather do than drive. Having the car do the driving frees you up to do work during your commute -- e.g., answer emails and whatnot, the type of thing one might normally do first thing upon arriving at the office -- potentially shortening your workday, or to enjoy entertainment options that you normally could not while driving. And of course, if you are out somewhere having a few drinks, it is much safer not to drive yourself home while intoxicated.
I wonder how well the global economy will cope when haulage, taxi services, busses... trains... all need no people.
Another benefit, since that will bring down the cost for all those services. The jobs lost will be a problem, which the article attempts to address.
And what happens when a deer decides to bolt out from the woods in front of your vehicle?
Most likely, the computer system detects it more quickly than a person would, reacts faster than humanly possible, and brakes and/or steers in an optimized way to avoid both collision and loss of control.That kind of scenario is one where automated systems easily beat humans. The concerning ones are when visibility is poor, or lane markings are bad or confusing, such as in inclement weather or construction zones.
just hire Disney's engineers and building a fucking monorail in most cities and connect them to the suburbs
A train line is great if all the places you want to go are in a nice line. And we could certainly use better mass transit many places in the U.S. But it's only a partial replacement for driving, particularly with most cities/metro areas being laid out (or sprawled out, as it were) with cars in mind as the primary mode of transportation. Self driving vehicles are a more complete solution (even if they fall short of 100%) and much more cost effective when you consider that developing self-driving vehicles involves perhaps a dozen companies* conducting billion or multi-billion dollar projects vs. 5-10 dozen metro areas** (just in the U.S.) conducting multi-billion to tens of billion dollar projects to deploy light rail that would cover a fraction of the population over more limited use cases.
For better or worse, the U.S. has a car- and truck-centric transportation culture. If we were starting from scratch, it might make more sense to do things differently. But as it is, we have to work from the infrastructure we already have. Which means making driving better. A good way to do that is to remove humans from the equation as much as possible since human error is the cause of nearly all traffic accidents.
Plus, lots of people need to drive on a regular basis (daily commutes, etc...), and generally don't enjoy it. So having someone (something) else do the driving is an upgrade for most people. Especially if there is no trade-off with the other up aspects of driving -- departing when you choose, making additional stops as desired, privacy and personal space, ability to carry around an amount of stuff that would be prohibitive on public transit, and store things in the vehicle, etc....
* With other companies buying components or licensing tech from the makers that do the best
** The U.S. has 382 Metropolitan Statistical Areas, over 100 of which have at least half a million population, and more than 50 of which have a million or more.
All those things people wish for (AI, good VR, etc) aren't going to happen.
I wouldn't go that far. Just because computing power, or transistor density to be more specific, is no longer doubling every 24 months does not mean progress has stopped, or will soon. It just means things don't get better and cheaper as fast as they have in recent decades. The other side of the coin that makes it seem like we're at a dead end is that processing power is finally good enough in the last several years that the current software doesn't just suck up all the resources as soon as they're available. In other words, it's not that new machines are not significantly more powerful than the ones from 5, 6, 7 years ago. It's that the power of the older machines is good enough that for many uses, the extra power is not all that noticeable.
Tech keeps advancing, and tech companies keep putting out new and (sometimes) improved products.
There are some people -- call them aficionados, technophiles, early adopters, hardcore gamers, audio nerds, fanboys, [fill in the blank] -- who will always buy the latest and greatest offering in a given market segment. And there will also be people (generally, a much larger proportion compared to the gotta-have-the-latest types) who wait for the second or third generation when many of the early kinks have been worked out and the price has dropped. And then they hold onto the thing for several years/product cycles before upgrading.
With respect to the new Xbox, the more incremental update is just a sign that gaming consoles are getting to be more mature tech . Nothing really new in that regard. That's how technology products often progress. As for tech in general, we perhaps have more things or at least more choices now, so maybe it feels like there is more to keep up with. But there is really no obligation to have one of everything, nevermind having the latest of everything.
I don't know whether most work requires physical presence. Perhaps. Certainly there is quite a lot that can be done without it -- far less than is currently being done remotely. There may be some debate about what is most effective, but that depends on too many variables to make a blanket statement, IMO. Call center work, for instance is a great candidate for remote workers where the option is probably under-utilized. The software used already tracks all the details of when the worker is online (if he starts on time, is available to take calls for long enough, how long his breaks are, etc...), call time and resolution metrics, sales if applicable, etc.... So the aspect of monitoring employees or knowing how much working is getting done does not really apply. It's largely solitary work, so there is generally little need for collaboration. The exception might be if junior-level or first line support frequently need assistance from a supervisor or more senior person. But it seems more typical that in such a case, the junior level person simply transfers the call to another person or department to escalate the issue, rather than getting in-person guidance from the senior person.
Something else that may be worth mentioning is that many employers who disallow remote work for employees are perfectly fine with it when it is convenient to the employer. When they want you to take a call or respond to an email or deal with an issue after hours/on the weekend/during vacation? Working remotely is obviously ok in those situations. If an employee wants to work from home for their own convenience, though, it might be a different story. Obviously, there is a lot of middle ground, and many employers allow varying amounts of leeway regarding how frequently one can work remotely. But I did want to point out the potential hypocrisy that many people have likely experienced.
now "Divisive" ads. Divisive is code for Hillary and Bernie
Divisive just means divisive. That can include driving Bernie supporters away from the polls or away from the democrat establishment. It can also include dividing the country by race, for those who are into that kind of thing.
> And 80k from Russians is a big issue vs a billion?
Not sure if you are trying to say that the 80,000 posts that facebook says were created or promoted by Russia-linked accounts cost a dollar each to create/promote/whatever, or if you're intentionally or accidentally conflating "posts" with dollars, but there are a few ways that a small-ish number of political posts could have an outsized impact. For one, by not being constrained by at least having a basis in fact, they can make any claim they want. This has the effect of both creating pressure on the campaign and/or legitimate organizations to play whack-a-mole putting down the false statements and rumors (where the name "Correct the Record" came from) and anchoring a narrative in the minds of many voters. It can also be used to move the dialog in more extreme directions, especially with the highly targeted way it is possible to deliver on social media.
If you are still blaming Russia for Trumps win, you still haven't learned
There is little doubt that it was a factor. Mostly likely not the deciding factor, but how big or small remains to be seen. The actual margin of victory was quite small -- around 120K votes across three states out of 129 million (nationwide) cast could have flipped the electoral vote.
This two party system is a problem
That's true. Unfortunately, the two parties with all the power are the ones that set the rules that make the system a two party system. Obviously, that makes it very difficult to change, since it means those two parties would have to voluntarily give up power.