I guess it depends on how efficient the fuel cell is. The last link in the summary says "internal combustion engines only transform a quarter of the energy content of gasoline into torque to a car's wheels. The new design could, theoretically, double that figure." So, theoretically, very theoretically, this new fuel cell design could enable a vehicle like the Chevy Volt to go twice as far on a gallon of gasoline as one using an ICE. Maybe more, since because it wouldn't need as large a gas tank and the fuel cell would be smaller than an ICE and generator, it would weigh less. And, since it wouldn't have as many moving parts it could potential have lower maintenance costs and a higher reliability.
I don't know that people want virtual laptops. They want certain features of a laptop some of the time without the power consumption, weight, and bulk the rest of the time. Sort of a tablet+. All these add ons let people get what laptop features they want when they want them.
My daughter lives about 75 miles from me and I was aware that if I mailed a small package first class to her it usually got there the next day, never more than two days later. It's quite convenient, and we've come to expect it. When I first became aware of this level of performance I was amazed that the USPS could do it at the price they were charging.
the post of is over a hundred years old. Congress is planning on it lasting for the next 100 years.
If congress is planning on the USPS being around for 100 years, why is it necessary to cram all the retiree health costs into ten years? Why not 30 or 40? What was so magical about 10 years other than the fact that it guaranteed the USPS would go bankrupt?
There are two issues. Pensions and future retiree health costs. They are more than fully funding the pensions. USPS has overpaid into its pension fund between $55 and $75 billion, yet is forced to continue to pay billions of dollars per year into the pension fund, even though the fund is fully (actually over) funded. The second issue is the amount of time USPS has to fund future health costs. By compressing the amount of time that the USPS has to meet future obligations, the provision all but guarantees the failure of the USPS. If most people or businesses had to meet all their future health costs by saving enough money in the next ten years, they too would go bankrupt.
To elaborate on what Uberbah is referring to, a 2006 Congressional mandate contained in the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006”, required the USPS to pre-fund healthcare benefits of future retirees, a 75 year liability over a 10 year period. It has to project and pay for employees who haven't even been born yet. No other agency or corporation is required to do this. UPS and FedEx are not required to do this, only the USPS. Whose lobbyists do you think congress and the white house were listening to when they passed this provision? This provision costs the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year. When you add in an adjustment that was made in how workers’ compensation costs were calculated based on interest rate assumptions and long term predictions concerning health care and compensation of $2.5 billion (a non cash accounting adjustment), you come up with $8 billion in cost. Actual loss was $500 million and when added, comes to the $8.5 billion reported for 2010. While $500 million is a lot, it doesn’t compare with $8.5 billion and is down from the previous year loss of $1 billion. If you took out the onerous pre-funding mandate, the Postal Service actually shows a $700 million profit over the last four years instead of the $20 billion loss.
I don't think you'd see the dismantling of civilization so much as a change in travel patterns, types of vehicles that people choose to purchase and where people choose to live and work. It would lead to more compact suburban communities that could be more easily serviced by mass transit and a further decrease in the population of rural communities. I live in a rural area, and I know if gas prices were gradually increased to $10/gallon it would lead to fewer people choosing to live around here, with most of those who left choosing to live closer to where they work and shop. But again, civilization wouldn't end.
Even if hourly it's still worth it to automate it. If you're conscientious it will permit you to exceed expectations, which can be good for a raise or bonus. If all you care about is slacking off, if you automate it you'll have more time to slack off. Either way it would pay to automate.
if all that matter is "aptitude" why did you all have a PhD? You could hire a genius out of high school in that case.
How would companies identify HS geniuses? Grades? SAT scores? Dissertation? Oh, that's right, they don't have one of those. Generally speaking, aptitude + a PhD is a better indicator of ability and potential performance than aptitude + a HS diploma. A person with a PhD has a much longer and better documented track record on which to judge how well they would fit into a job and an organization. There's more to aptitude than being extremely bright.
As cars become more efficient and use less gasoline and diesel per mile, or none in the case of EVs, state governments in the US are looking at alternatives to taxing fuel as a source of funds for transportation infrastructure. One alternative that has been seriously looked at is equipping cars registered in a state with a GPS device that would record how many miles you drive in the state each year. Think of it as a mileage tax rather than a fuel tax. You know that it won't just stop at mileage, though.
It's not uncommon for companies to sue web sites that incorporate their name for trademark infringement. It doesn't mean the company owned the web site, just that they felt it infringed on their trademark. Has there ever been a case where a company was able to seize a web site, all of its content and user information, on the theory that because the site incorporated their name they therefore own it? If I create a web site called www.mickeymousefans.com, can Disney seize control of it? Would it be any different if a Disney employee did this without the knowledge of Disney? If an employee of Exxon Mobil opens a gas station that has the name Exxon Mobil in it, Exxon Mobil can certainly demand that he remove Exxon Mobil from the name, but are they allowed to seize the physical assets of the business? If not, why should PhoneDog be allowed to seize Kravitz's twitter account?
>> This changed when firms went public and came to be run by employees rather than partners
Not "by employees", but by the other investment groups (401k's, pension funds, etc), who want their guaranteed quarterly dividends or-else-they'll-throw-the-bums-out, leading to riskier investments in order to placate them. Combine that with situations like the CRA, where the banks are told on the one hand to lend prudently, but on the other told they'll be penalized if they fail to lend enough in depressed areas, by definition a riskier prospect.
CRA is a favorite target for causing the subprime mortgage crises, the evidence that it was a primary cause is scant. In a speech by the Fed governor the relationship between the CRA and subprime loans was discussed.
Recently, Federal Reserve staff has undertaken more specific analysis focusing on the potential relationship between the CRA and the current subprime crisis. This analysis was performed for the purpose of assessing claims that the CRA was a principal cause of the current mortgage market difficulties. For this analysis, the staff examined lending activity covering the period that corresponds to the height of the subprime boom.
The research focused on two basic questions. First, we asked what share of originations for subprime loans is related to the CRA. The potential role of the CRA in the subprime crisis could either be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that the loans that are the focus of the CRA represent a very small portion of the subprime lending market, casting considerable doubt on the potential contribution that the law could have made to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Second, we asked how CRA-related subprime loans performed relative to other loans. Once again, the potential role of the CRA could be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that delinquency rates were high in all neighborhood income groups, and that CRA-related subprime loans performed in a comparable manner to other subprime loans; as such, differences in performance between CRA-related subprime lending and other subprime lending cannot lie at the root of recent market turmoil.
In analyzing the available data, we focused on two distinct metrics: loan origination activity and loan performance. With respect to the first question concerning loan originations, we wanted to know which types of lending institutions made higher-priced loans, to whom those loans were made, and in what types of neighborhoods the loans were extended.5 This analysis allowed us to determine what fraction of subprime lending could be related to the CRA.
Our analysis of the loan data found that about 60 percent of higher-priced loan originations went to middle- or higher-income borrowers or neighborhoods. Such borrowers are not the populations targeted by the CRA. In addition, more than 20 percent of the higher-priced loans were extended to lower-income borrowers or borrowers in lower-income areas by independent nonbank institutions--that is, institutions not covered by the CRA.6
Putting together these facts provides a striking result: Only 6 percent of all the higher-priced loans were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods in their CRA assessment areas, the local geographies that are the primary focus for CRA evaluation purposes. This result undermines the assertion by critics of the potential for a substantial role for the CRA in the subprime crisis. In other words, the very small share of all higher-priced loan originations that can reasonably be attributed to the CRA makes it hard to imagine how this law could have contributed in any meaningful way to the current subprime crisis.
Banks are generally allowed to fail. Quite a few go bankrupt every year. The US facilitates the transfer of their remaining assets to other banks that are healthier. The shareholders in those failed banks lose their investment. The executives have to find new jobs. Depositor runs are avoided by the FDIC guaranteeing deposits. The problem that happened in 2008 and 2009 is that quite a few very large banks were on the verge of going under and threatening to take down the entire economy with themselves. Credit markets were locking up. At least one money market fund was breaking the buck, with more threatening to follow. Credit is essential to capitalist economies and events that have a high likelihood of shutting off credit to most of the economy are something to be avoided at all costs. The problem with banks like Citibank and Goldman Sachs isn't so much that they're so big, it's that they're too connected to everything else. When their executives bet the company and fail, they don't just bankrupt their own companies, they also drag down a lot of other companies, including other too big to fail banks. We got a taste of what could have happened when Lehman Bros. went bankrupt. If too many banks fail the FDIC wouldn't be able to guarantee that it could cover all the money people had deposited, resulting in runs on banks. If too many of those big banks go down at once it's likely the economy would lockup, and we'd see a recession much worse than the one we just went through. The problem isn't that the big banks were propped up in order to rescue the economy, it's that not enough reform happened as a result.
What benefits do unionized federal employees received that non-unionized do not? Most federal employees are not in unions. Federal employees can not be compelled to join a union. Federal unions can’t advocate striking or actually go on strike. According to the U.S. Federal Code, federal employees are not allowed to strike. It is deemed an unfair labor practice which can result in the employment termination and the revoking of the union’s status as a recognized labor organization. Recall how all the air traffic controllers were summarily fired and replaced thirty years ago.
Even if solar panels were free, solar electricity still has a high hurdle to jump before it becomes competitive with other sources.
The costs include the mounting structure and the power inverter.
The article isn't about electricity from photovoltaic panels mounted on roofs. It's about large industrial scale solar concentrators like this one. It has the potential to be cheaper than PV generated electricity and it keeps producing electricity after the sun goes down.
Labor is only part of what goes into making things that people want. Machines will still require raw materials to produce something. As the population of Earth increases those raw materials will generally become more expensive. Money will still be needed to buy raw material to build objects.
This math also points out that its idiotic when baby boomers say, "people should work through college, that's what I did" because times are completely different. And as parent said, things are only going to get worse.
I know an awful lot of baby boomers. I am one, I socialize with them. I deal with them on a business level. When the cost of getting a degree comes up, all the boomers I know wonder how young people can afford to go to college if they don't have a parent helping them out. They're amazed that it costs so much today and wonder why the price of a university degree rises so much faster than the cost of living. Most of them have helped put their kids through school, so they're pretty much aware of the cost of getting a degree. Maybe baby boomers are different where you live.
Teachers' unions can often be a problem, but there's no evidence that non-union charter schools are doing any better in producing well prepared students. The biggest impediment to student achievement in the US is a population that is increasingly intellectually lazy and generation of students that is being taught to pass standardized tests rather than master a subject. Bring back the slide rule to schools and get off my lawn.
Yeah, I was thinking that either they're covering up some other incompetence or this was an inside job. I'm inclined to think that someone knew those tapes would be in that car at that time. But then there's Hanlon's razor, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. And this was pretty stupid.
Dumbing down information by making it too brief to convey complex concepts isn't just a problem with broadcast media. This same problem exists for both print and online news sources consumed by the masses. I don't know why it happens, but it seems to be a common phenomenon. Part of the problem may be that so many news sources get their content from the same few sources. Those sources need to create content for the lowest common denominator in order to sell to as many publishers as possible, and the lowest common denominator is a brief, dumbed down, fact free article.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess it depends on how efficient the fuel cell is. The last link in the summary says "internal combustion engines only transform a quarter of the energy content of gasoline into torque to a car's wheels. The new design could, theoretically, double that figure." So, theoretically, very theoretically, this new fuel cell design could enable a vehicle like the Chevy Volt to go twice as far on a gallon of gasoline as one using an ICE. Maybe more, since because it wouldn't need as large a gas tank and the fuel cell would be smaller than an ICE and generator, it would weigh less. And, since it wouldn't have as many moving parts it could potential have lower maintenance costs and a higher reliability.
I don't know that people want virtual laptops. They want certain features of a laptop some of the time without the power consumption, weight, and bulk the rest of the time. Sort of a tablet+. All these add ons let people get what laptop features they want when they want them.
My daughter lives about 75 miles from me and I was aware that if I mailed a small package first class to her it usually got there the next day, never more than two days later. It's quite convenient, and we've come to expect it. When I first became aware of this level of performance I was amazed that the USPS could do it at the price they were charging.
Because of the way a 2006 provision forces them to account for future retiree benefits they'll be bankrupt before the end of 5 years.
the post of is over a hundred years old. Congress is planning on it lasting for the next 100 years.
If congress is planning on the USPS being around for 100 years, why is it necessary to cram all the retiree health costs into ten years? Why not 30 or 40? What was so magical about 10 years other than the fact that it guaranteed the USPS would go bankrupt?
There are two issues. Pensions and future retiree health costs. They are more than fully funding the pensions. USPS has overpaid into its pension fund between $55 and $75 billion, yet is forced to continue to pay billions of dollars per year into the pension fund, even though the fund is fully (actually over) funded. The second issue is the amount of time USPS has to fund future health costs. By compressing the amount of time that the USPS has to meet future obligations, the provision all but guarantees the failure of the USPS. If most people or businesses had to meet all their future health costs by saving enough money in the next ten years, they too would go bankrupt.
To elaborate on what Uberbah is referring to, a 2006 Congressional mandate contained in the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006”, required the USPS to pre-fund healthcare benefits of future retirees, a 75 year liability over a 10 year period. It has to project and pay for employees who haven't even been born yet. No other agency or corporation is required to do this. UPS and FedEx are not required to do this, only the USPS. Whose lobbyists do you think congress and the white house were listening to when they passed this provision? This provision costs the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year. When you add in an adjustment that was made in how workers’ compensation costs were calculated based on interest rate assumptions and long term predictions concerning health care and compensation of $2.5 billion (a non cash accounting adjustment), you come up with $8 billion in cost. Actual loss was $500 million and when added, comes to the $8.5 billion reported for 2010. While $500 million is a lot, it doesn’t compare with $8.5 billion and is down from the previous year loss of $1 billion. If you took out the onerous pre-funding mandate, the Postal Service actually shows a $700 million profit over the last four years instead of the $20 billion loss.
I don't think you'd see the dismantling of civilization so much as a change in travel patterns, types of vehicles that people choose to purchase and where people choose to live and work. It would lead to more compact suburban communities that could be more easily serviced by mass transit and a further decrease in the population of rural communities. I live in a rural area, and I know if gas prices were gradually increased to $10/gallon it would lead to fewer people choosing to live around here, with most of those who left choosing to live closer to where they work and shop. But again, civilization wouldn't end.
Even if hourly it's still worth it to automate it. If you're conscientious it will permit you to exceed expectations, which can be good for a raise or bonus. If all you care about is slacking off, if you automate it you'll have more time to slack off. Either way it would pay to automate.
if all that matter is "aptitude" why did you all have a PhD? You could hire a genius out of high school in that case.
How would companies identify HS geniuses? Grades? SAT scores? Dissertation? Oh, that's right, they don't have one of those. Generally speaking, aptitude + a PhD is a better indicator of ability and potential performance than aptitude + a HS diploma. A person with a PhD has a much longer and better documented track record on which to judge how well they would fit into a job and an organization. There's more to aptitude than being extremely bright.
As cars become more efficient and use less gasoline and diesel per mile, or none in the case of EVs, state governments in the US are looking at alternatives to taxing fuel as a source of funds for transportation infrastructure. One alternative that has been seriously looked at is equipping cars registered in a state with a GPS device that would record how many miles you drive in the state each year. Think of it as a mileage tax rather than a fuel tax. You know that it won't just stop at mileage, though.
It's not uncommon for companies to sue web sites that incorporate their name for trademark infringement. It doesn't mean the company owned the web site, just that they felt it infringed on their trademark. Has there ever been a case where a company was able to seize a web site, all of its content and user information, on the theory that because the site incorporated their name they therefore own it? If I create a web site called www.mickeymousefans.com, can Disney seize control of it? Would it be any different if a Disney employee did this without the knowledge of Disney? If an employee of Exxon Mobil opens a gas station that has the name Exxon Mobil in it, Exxon Mobil can certainly demand that he remove Exxon Mobil from the name, but are they allowed to seize the physical assets of the business? If not, why should PhoneDog be allowed to seize Kravitz's twitter account?
>> This changed when firms went public and came to be run by employees rather than partners
Not "by employees", but by the other investment groups (401k's, pension funds, etc), who want their guaranteed quarterly dividends or-else-they'll-throw-the-bums-out, leading to riskier investments in order to placate them. Combine that with situations like the CRA, where the banks are told on the one hand to lend prudently, but on the other told they'll be penalized if they fail to lend enough in depressed areas, by definition a riskier prospect.
CRA is a favorite target for causing the subprime mortgage crises, the evidence that it was a primary cause is scant. In a speech by the Fed governor the relationship between the CRA and subprime loans was discussed.
Recently, Federal Reserve staff has undertaken more specific analysis focusing on the potential relationship between the CRA and the current subprime crisis. This analysis was performed for the purpose of assessing claims that the CRA was a principal cause of the current mortgage market difficulties. For this analysis, the staff examined lending activity covering the period that corresponds to the height of the subprime boom.
The research focused on two basic questions. First, we asked what share of originations for subprime loans is related to the CRA. The potential role of the CRA in the subprime crisis could either be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that the loans that are the focus of the CRA represent a very small portion of the subprime lending market, casting considerable doubt on the potential contribution that the law could have made to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Second, we asked how CRA-related subprime loans performed relative to other loans. Once again, the potential role of the CRA could be large or small, depending on the answer to this question. We found that delinquency rates were high in all neighborhood income groups, and that CRA-related subprime loans performed in a comparable manner to other subprime loans; as such, differences in performance between CRA-related subprime lending and other subprime lending cannot lie at the root of recent market turmoil.
In analyzing the available data, we focused on two distinct metrics: loan origination activity and loan performance. With respect to the first question concerning loan originations, we wanted to know which types of lending institutions made higher-priced loans, to whom those loans were made, and in what types of neighborhoods the loans were extended.5 This analysis allowed us to determine what fraction of subprime lending could be related to the CRA.
Our analysis of the loan data found that about 60 percent of higher-priced loan originations went to middle- or higher-income borrowers or neighborhoods. Such borrowers are not the populations targeted by the CRA. In addition, more than 20 percent of the higher-priced loans were extended to lower-income borrowers or borrowers in lower-income areas by independent nonbank institutions--that is, institutions not covered by the CRA.6
Putting together these facts provides a striking result: Only 6 percent of all the higher-priced loans were extended by CRA-covered lenders to lower-income borrowers or neighborhoods in their CRA assessment areas, the local geographies that are the primary focus for CRA evaluation purposes. This result undermines the assertion by critics of the potential for a substantial role for the CRA in the subprime crisis. In other words, the very small share of all higher-priced loan originations that can reasonably be attributed to the CRA makes it hard to imagine how this law could have contributed in any meaningful way to the current subprime crisis.
"increase transparency to investors"
That violates the "make as little as possible transparent to investors" rule in the executive handbook.
Banks are generally allowed to fail. Quite a few go bankrupt every year. The US facilitates the transfer of their remaining assets to other banks that are healthier. The shareholders in those failed banks lose their investment. The executives have to find new jobs. Depositor runs are avoided by the FDIC guaranteeing deposits. The problem that happened in 2008 and 2009 is that quite a few very large banks were on the verge of going under and threatening to take down the entire economy with themselves. Credit markets were locking up. At least one money market fund was breaking the buck, with more threatening to follow. Credit is essential to capitalist economies and events that have a high likelihood of shutting off credit to most of the economy are something to be avoided at all costs. The problem with banks like Citibank and Goldman Sachs isn't so much that they're so big, it's that they're too connected to everything else. When their executives bet the company and fail, they don't just bankrupt their own companies, they also drag down a lot of other companies, including other too big to fail banks. We got a taste of what could have happened when Lehman Bros. went bankrupt. If too many banks fail the FDIC wouldn't be able to guarantee that it could cover all the money people had deposited, resulting in runs on banks. If too many of those big banks go down at once it's likely the economy would lockup, and we'd see a recession much worse than the one we just went through. The problem isn't that the big banks were propped up in order to rescue the economy, it's that not enough reform happened as a result.
What benefits do unionized federal employees received that non-unionized do not? Most federal employees are not in unions. Federal employees can not be compelled to join a union. Federal unions can’t advocate striking or actually go on strike. According to the U.S. Federal Code, federal employees are not allowed to strike. It is deemed an unfair labor practice which can result in the employment termination and the revoking of the union’s status as a recognized labor organization. Recall how all the air traffic controllers were summarily fired and replaced thirty years ago.
Even if solar panels were free, solar electricity still has a high hurdle to jump before it becomes competitive with other sources.
The costs include the mounting structure and the power inverter.
The article isn't about electricity from photovoltaic panels mounted on roofs. It's about large industrial scale solar concentrators like this one. It has the potential to be cheaper than PV generated electricity and it keeps producing electricity after the sun goes down.
Labor is only part of what goes into making things that people want. Machines will still require raw materials to produce something. As the population of Earth increases those raw materials will generally become more expensive. Money will still be needed to buy raw material to build objects.
This math also points out that its idiotic when baby boomers say, "people should work through college, that's what I did" because times are completely different. And as parent said, things are only going to get worse.
I know an awful lot of baby boomers. I am one, I socialize with them. I deal with them on a business level. When the cost of getting a degree comes up, all the boomers I know wonder how young people can afford to go to college if they don't have a parent helping them out. They're amazed that it costs so much today and wonder why the price of a university degree rises so much faster than the cost of living. Most of them have helped put their kids through school, so they're pretty much aware of the cost of getting a degree. Maybe baby boomers are different where you live.
There's always been a need for this app. It's just now that the technology to implement it for the masses exists.
Teachers' unions can often be a problem, but there's no evidence that non-union charter schools are doing any better in producing well prepared students. The biggest impediment to student achievement in the US is a population that is increasingly intellectually lazy and generation of students that is being taught to pass standardized tests rather than master a subject. Bring back the slide rule to schools and get off my lawn.
It will be interesting if universities with real brands will ever allow master or doctorates to be via online study.
The Teachers College of Columbia University (there's a brand for you) offers an online master in in computing in education.
Yeah, I was thinking that either they're covering up some other incompetence or this was an inside job. I'm inclined to think that someone knew those tapes would be in that car at that time. But then there's Hanlon's razor, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. And this was pretty stupid.
Dumbing down information by making it too brief to convey complex concepts isn't just a problem with broadcast media. This same problem exists for both print and online news sources consumed by the masses. I don't know why it happens, but it seems to be a common phenomenon. Part of the problem may be that so many news sources get their content from the same few sources. Those sources need to create content for the lowest common denominator in order to sell to as many publishers as possible, and the lowest common denominator is a brief, dumbed down, fact free article.
If you only take the lowest bidders you'll only get the lowest performers. Better performers would find someplace else to work.