I appreciate that there's no one thing that describes everybody and a system of communication that works for everybody, but I'm sure you understand that you're in a tiny minority of people where your statement above is true.
There are no middle or low-income families that drive these vehicles, only upper-class. And especially with the Teslas, these vehicles are not only a form of transportation, but also status symbols.
I can agree on that when it comes to Tesla's S/X models... but what about the Leaf, Volt, Bolt, and other "cheap" electric vehicles? Those are far from status symbols, and the people that drive them are definitely not upper-class.
Maybe it would make sense to continue to offer subsidies on cars priced below, say $40K, and then scale it down or outright remove it for higher priced vehicles.
Yet, there are people aplenty who will not ride the train, in the same fashion that they won't wait for appointment TV. It's either slightly inconvenient for them, or significantly beneath their imagined station in life.
There are plenty of very rich folk living in Manhattan that take the train every day.
Many people I know would take the train, if there was one. I don't think the "status" thing is holding people back. Having the nearest station as close as the final destination, trains averaging a quarter of the speed of a car, and one-per-hour service are the reason nobody takes them.
In a company, talent isn't important. You need to be perceived as having talent that makes the company a profit, and whether or not that perception matches reality isn't really important.
The rest of what you wrote about communication is spot on, but this conclusion in a bit too cynical, in my opinion.
Talent is important, otherwise there's nothing to advertise. There's only so much that you can do to mediocre work to make it appear great to higher-ups, and most managers will still prefer to advertise the work that's the most easiest to advertise.
Talent + communication = success. Communication alone will get you further than talent alone, but neither can compete when you have both.
The funny thing is, there isn't really a noticeable difference any more. Hasn't been for a few years now.
That's neither a "funny thing", nor an accurate thing. I do realize, and so should you, that what is "noticeable" is is quite different from person to person. Some people think it's fine to code through VNC with 200ms+ latency, some people don't see why 20fps is not good enough for games, and some people even think that HD video is not noticeably better than SD. While I don't understand how that can be, I do understand that there are people who see (and tolerate) things differently, and that we all have a different understanding of what "noticeable" is.
In conclusion, please don't assume that just because you can't notice the difference, nobody can.
I've got nothing but great memories of Sinclair ZX Spectrum... compared to what you were using, this was a beast. 48K of memory, works with any cassette player, built-in audio...:)
And, best of all, those rubber keys will BASIC words built-in, so you don't even need a book to figure out what all is available to do. I learned programming by trying every "command" to see what it does.:)
If you leave your car unlocked and someone steals your laptop from the passenger seat, it really is the fault of the thief.
How about if you open the door and tell the thief that you'd like all your stuff discarded? And then the thief asks you if you're sure that you want *all* your stuff discarded? And you say, yes, of course.
I set up my editors to do exactly that, and whether I'm debugging code or simply working on making changes to existing code, the first thing I do is reformat.
I bet people love collaborating on projects with you.
If you've never run into the case of someone writing:
if (a == b)
a++;
b++;
...and then trying to figure out how can b be incremented without a incrementing as well... then you just haven't work on other people's code quite enough yet to appreciate the point.
I don't know quite how I feel about Python's solution yet (I've only been actively using it for a few months), but it does make it very obvious *how* things are going to run, vs. what the author intended. Good or bad, it does make it easier to debug in some situations.
Companies are not investing in AI to make "cheaper" goods.. they are doing it to increase profits.. which means THEIR value goes up.. the outward cost will remain as it is.. which mean increased profits..
That might be true for the market leader(s) -- they can afford to produce things cheaper and keep the price the same, thereby increasing the profits (i.e. Apple).
However, for everybody else, making cheaper goods is the goal so that they can sell their stuff at all -- at significantly smaller prices than the market leader. I.e. all the $50 smartphones out there that you can get.
If your assertion was true, we'd never see the price of anything come down. But, that's clearly not true. The high-end price of the top-of-the-line product remains high/stable, while the prices for everything else continue to come down as the production costs decrease. The market forces work quite well to pass on the production cost savings to the consumers for the vast majority of the products -- i.e. everything that's not top-of-the-line.
Kindle Oasis is definitely pricey, but I've been reading so much more since I got it. It's the perfect reading device... light, easy to hold with one hand, sharp illuminated screen that works both inside and outside as well as paper... and when I'm done with a book, I can browse for, buy, start reading the next one immediately.
I have very little reason to go back to paper, at least for fiction.
No offer of citizenship (for anyone until at least 2057).
I don't understand the motivation for this. If they have passed your stringent test for being needed and skilled, why not let them stay? Why finance the growth of businesses in other countries?
Quarterly auction with an absolute cap on quantity, starting bid of $200,000/year (in total compensation) + 25% fee.
The problem with this is that you'd essentially limit the H1-Bs to Silicon Valley. The salaries there are so much higher than elsewhere in the country for comparable jobs, that companies located in smaller tech centers would have no chance of winning an auction. And, arguably, they are the ones that need more help.
I don't understand the motivation for this. If they have passed your stringent test for being needed and skilled, why not let them stay? Why finance the growth of businesses in other countries?
Haven't you noticed hundreds of tiny ads in the classified sections of local newspapers asking for programmers or testers and they include salary information?
Those are needed for job-based green card applications, not for H1-Bs.
There are just so many examples for when these rules make no sense. "Don't borrow what you can't afford to pay back" is a good rule, but too abstract, so people come up with ones you listed which are seemingly straightforward and sound. But, they are far from it.
If you meant are pretty far I disagree with you. 'Flavor of the year' is a figure of speech meaning they are a fad, and indication is that GP is very correct about a lot of these. Ruby is already yesterday's news, with the MEAN stack and even newer ideas taking its place. Swyft is very new and replaces Objective-C with a C#/Java-like language, which begs the question why don't we just use those?
Yeah, that was a typo, I meant "are pretty far".
I don't know how Ruby can be included in the list of "fad" languages:
fad = an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities
It's been around for 20 years now, and was quite heavily used for a number of those years. Yeah, it's on the decline, and there are better alternatives available for its most common use, but that still doesn't qualify it as a "fad", any more than Cobol, C, or even Perl, are fads.
Swift is on the other side of the spectrum -- new, but it has a backing of a company with power to force an army of developers to use it, and hence its adoption is quick and likely to be long lasting. Again, we're not talking about some random "cool" language of the year that will die out before seeing any real use.
These are simply not languages that I think of when I think of "flavour of the year". I think your bar for that description is much lower than mine.
They are also decidedly tight-lipped about this on their own website, which contains nothing but wishy-washy rhetoric, much in the vein of TFA and this summary. No hard data, no technical details, not even a clarification of what terms like "hybrid" mean.
I think it's safe to say that they didn't get Boeing and JetBlue to invest based on the information on the web site... Now, maybe it was a con based on a bunch of fake data, or a really good marketing presentation... or they have some real ideas. Who knows. But if it's some really great idea that got them the money, I doubt that they'd post it on their web site.
While it might work during cruise and landing, will the extra fuel need for takeoff and possibly to support flight at cruise altitude, and thus extra fuel burn and the need to carry such fuel, outweigh the benefits in reduced fuel consumption.
You can't really say that without running the math on jet fuel costs vs. recharging batteries. We don't know what weight deltas we're talking about, what kind of operational costs we're talking about on short flights (re: not having to handle fuel, not having to adjust for variable weights due to burning fuel, etc...).. and then potential longer-term benefits -- solar charging while in air, government subsidies for cleaner air, safety and reliability which is certainly going to be higher than burning fuel at some point... etc.
You might be totally right, but without running a fairly complex financial and engineering analysis, you can't dismiss this... which is presumably what these guys did.
Settle for a 1080p projector, a 100" screen, a mid-range speaker system, install everything yourself (5-10K installation -- WTF, what are you building there?), and throw in a couple of powered leather recliners, and you can have the whole thing for about $3000.
It won't satisfy the very picky, sure, but it's a damn good, and I'm still impressed that I can have all that at my own home these days. Considering the other advantages of being in your home, it's a way better experience than most movie theater visits.
If I didn't have Alamo to go to for good food & drinks along with a movie, which is harder to replicate at home (the part where someone else makes it for you and brings it to you:) ), I'd likely avoid the theaters altogether.
Slashdot Mirror
I appreciate that there's no one thing that describes everybody and a system of communication that works for everybody, but I'm sure you understand that you're in a tiny minority of people where your statement above is true.
I can agree on that when it comes to Tesla's S/X models... but what about the Leaf, Volt, Bolt, and other "cheap" electric vehicles? Those are far from status symbols, and the people that drive them are definitely not upper-class.
Maybe it would make sense to continue to offer subsidies on cars priced below, say $40K, and then scale it down or outright remove it for higher priced vehicles.
There are plenty of very rich folk living in Manhattan that take the train every day.
Many people I know would take the train, if there was one. I don't think the "status" thing is holding people back. Having the nearest station as close as the final destination, trains averaging a quarter of the speed of a car, and one-per-hour service are the reason nobody takes them.
The rest of what you wrote about communication is spot on, but this conclusion in a bit too cynical, in my opinion.
Talent is important, otherwise there's nothing to advertise. There's only so much that you can do to mediocre work to make it appear great to higher-ups, and most managers will still prefer to advertise the work that's the most easiest to advertise.
Talent + communication = success. Communication alone will get you further than talent alone, but neither can compete when you have both.
That's neither a "funny thing", nor an accurate thing. I do realize, and so should you, that what is "noticeable" is is quite different from person to person. Some people think it's fine to code through VNC with 200ms+ latency, some people don't see why 20fps is not good enough for games, and some people even think that HD video is not noticeably better than SD. While I don't understand how that can be, I do understand that there are people who see (and tolerate) things differently, and that we all have a different understanding of what "noticeable" is.
In conclusion, please don't assume that just because you can't notice the difference, nobody can.
I've got nothing but great memories of Sinclair ZX Spectrum... compared to what you were using, this was a beast. 48K of memory, works with any cassette player, built-in audio... :)
And, best of all, those rubber keys will BASIC words built-in, so you don't even need a book to figure out what all is available to do. I learned programming by trying every "command" to see what it does. :)
The acquisition completed today. It's quite interesting to see what Amazon is going to do, and how quickly they will implement the changes.
How about if you open the door and tell the thief that you'd like all your stuff discarded? And then the thief asks you if you're sure that you want *all* your stuff discarded? And you say, yes, of course.
Is it still not your fault?
Not true for Apple, either. There's plenty of engineering being done in Austin.
It just doesn't have the same ring to it when translated into English. "Go into three pretty mother's pussies" sounds just plain... weird.
But, the gun was actually in his pocket, as many of the links about the trial details show: here's one random link.
I bet people love collaborating on projects with you.
If you've never run into the case of someone writing:
...and then trying to figure out how can b be incremented without a incrementing as well... then you just haven't work on other people's code quite enough yet to appreciate the point.
I don't know quite how I feel about Python's solution yet (I've only been actively using it for a few months), but it does make it very obvious *how* things are going to run, vs. what the author intended. Good or bad, it does make it easier to debug in some situations.
Kindle is still alive and well, and better than ever. Having more options is not a bad thing.
That might be true for the market leader(s) -- they can afford to produce things cheaper and keep the price the same, thereby increasing the profits (i.e. Apple).
However, for everybody else, making cheaper goods is the goal so that they can sell their stuff at all -- at significantly smaller prices than the market leader. I.e. all the $50 smartphones out there that you can get.
If your assertion was true, we'd never see the price of anything come down. But, that's clearly not true. The high-end price of the top-of-the-line product remains high/stable, while the prices for everything else continue to come down as the production costs decrease. The market forces work quite well to pass on the production cost savings to the consumers for the vast majority of the products -- i.e. everything that's not top-of-the-line.
Kindle Oasis is definitely pricey, but I've been reading so much more since I got it. It's the perfect reading device... light, easy to hold with one hand, sharp illuminated screen that works both inside and outside as well as paper... and when I'm done with a book, I can browse for, buy, start reading the next one immediately.
I have very little reason to go back to paper, at least for fiction.
Bah, html typo dropped the quote:
I don't understand the motivation for this. If they have passed your stringent test for being needed and skilled, why not let them stay? Why finance the growth of businesses in other countries?
The problem with this is that you'd essentially limit the H1-Bs to Silicon Valley. The salaries there are so much higher than elsewhere in the country for comparable jobs, that companies located in smaller tech centers would have no chance of winning an auction. And, arguably, they are the ones that need more help.
I don't understand the motivation for this. If they have passed your stringent test for being needed and skilled, why not let them stay? Why finance the growth of businesses in other countries?
Those are needed for job-based green card applications, not for H1-Bs.
If only things were so simple...
There are just so many examples for when these rules make no sense. "Don't borrow what you can't afford to pay back" is a good rule, but too abstract, so people come up with ones you listed which are seemingly straightforward and sound. But, they are far from it.
Yeah, that was a typo, I meant "are pretty far".
I don't know how Ruby can be included in the list of "fad" languages:
fad = an intense and widely shared enthusiasm for something, especially one that is short-lived and without basis in the object's qualities
It's been around for 20 years now, and was quite heavily used for a number of those years. Yeah, it's on the decline, and there are better alternatives available for its most common use, but that still doesn't qualify it as a "fad", any more than Cobol, C, or even Perl, are fads.
Swift is on the other side of the spectrum -- new, but it has a backing of a company with power to force an army of developers to use it, and hence its adoption is quick and likely to be long lasting. Again, we're not talking about some random "cool" language of the year that will die out before seeing any real use.
These are simply not languages that I think of when I think of "flavour of the year". I think your bar for that description is much lower than mine.
I think it's safe to say that they didn't get Boeing and JetBlue to invest based on the information on the web site... Now, maybe it was a con based on a bunch of fake data, or a really good marketing presentation... or they have some real ideas. Who knows. But if it's some really great idea that got them the money, I doubt that they'd post it on their web site.
I hear you about Rust, maybe... but Scala, Ruby, and Swift aren't pretty far from "flavour of the year" languages.
You can't really say that without running the math on jet fuel costs vs. recharging batteries. We don't know what weight deltas we're talking about, what kind of operational costs we're talking about on short flights (re: not having to handle fuel, not having to adjust for variable weights due to burning fuel, etc...).. and then potential longer-term benefits -- solar charging while in air, government subsidies for cleaner air, safety and reliability which is certainly going to be higher than burning fuel at some point... etc.
You might be totally right, but without running a fairly complex financial and engineering analysis, you can't dismiss this... which is presumably what these guys did.
Settle for a 1080p projector, a 100" screen, a mid-range speaker system, install everything yourself (5-10K installation -- WTF, what are you building there?), and throw in a couple of powered leather recliners, and you can have the whole thing for about $3000.
It won't satisfy the very picky, sure, but it's a damn good, and I'm still impressed that I can have all that at my own home these days. Considering the other advantages of being in your home, it's a way better experience than most movie theater visits.
If I didn't have Alamo to go to for good food & drinks along with a movie, which is harder to replicate at home (the part where someone else makes it for you and brings it to you :) ), I'd likely avoid the theaters altogether.