I can only imagine that cutting through extra layers of fat has to inconvenience the surgeon. People that smoke will react to the drugs differently. People that smoke have a suppressed immune system, creating complications afterwards and might mean more surgery later. Smoking reduces lung capacity, making things like delivering oxygen more complicated. Smoking affects blood flow, which has to impact the surgery somewhat.
My favorite argument against socialized medicine. It turns individual's bodies into a public problem. Keep your laws off my body.
Sounds a lot like any other socialist program, gains are private but costs are public. I'm not obligated to pay for your health care. If you ask nicely though then maybe I'll just give you the money you need. If the person asking is obviously overweight, smokes, and is asking for my money then I might be less inclined to be charitable.
My favorite argument against socialized medicine is the price control aspect. Price controls are very bad for any commodity, and health care is a commodity. How is socialized medicine a price control? I'm glad you asked (or rather I'll tell you even if you didn't ask). Imagine someone has knee surgery. The hospital goes to the government and asks to be compensated. The government will respond with something like, that's too much so we'll only pay for this much, or that's below our maximum so we'll give what you asked. What happens for every knee surgery afterward? They all ask the government for the same compensation regardless of the real costs. There's no incentive to reduce costs or improve the quality of the work because they get paid the same regardless. So long as the hospital doesn't do outright fraud or the quality of the work is far below some government standard of quality there's no real oversight of the work and what was paid.
With private medicine people pay the price for the work provided. If they want a more experienced surgeon then they can offer to pay more for the surgery. If they cannot pay as much then they will likely get a less experienced surgeon, a not as nice recovery room, or whatever to save on costs. Insurance companies have a similar effect on this, they set the prices they are willing to pay and so hospitals will do what they can to get the money they need to stay in business. That can mean charging $20 for a single tablet of Tylenol, and they can get away with this because it's "prescribed medication by the attending surgeon".
I'll believe people are serious about CAGW when I see the US start to built nuclear reactors at a rate that is equal to that of shutting down old coal and nuclear. A quick Google search tells me that 6GW of coal was retired in the first half of 2016. If we assume a new nuclear power plant has a capacity of 1 GW (which is pretty common) then we should see a new nuclear power plant in the USA every month. My quick search only verified what I've heard elsewhere, we will need 1 GW of new nuclear power capacity from now until the sun goes out just to keep up with current demand as old power plants are retired.
Wind is nice, I guess. It's not too expensive, compared to what we pay now for electricity, but being unreliable has it's costs. Solar on a utility scale is just plain stupid, it's too expensive, too unreliable, and takes up a lot of valuable real estate that'd be put to better use growing food, mitigating floods, and so on. Use hydro when and where you can but that goes only so far. Bio-fuels are just an environmental disaster, I cannot understand how "environmentalists" consider that an option. Nuclear has a zero carbon footprint (or as close to zero as any other "zero carbon" energy source), it's safe, it's inexpensive, and requires no more resources than coal or natural gas, and a fraction of the resources as wind and solar.
One great thing about nuclear is it can take on a hurricane and keep going, recent events prove this. Windmills and solar panels don't handle these storms well. A nuclear power plant tends to be in a large concrete building that even an airplane slamming into it won't stop it. Wind and solar are necessarily exposed to damage.
It boggles the mind that we've ignored nuclear power for so long. I guess the powers that be just aren't taking the threat of CAGW seriously, so why should I?
When it comes to devices falling back to USB 3 if the cable or host system don't support the Thunderbolt protocol does not make much sense to me. What devices would you want/need such fallback? A hard drive might make sense I guess.
Hard drives, network adapters, audio interfaces, printers (do Thunderbolt printers exist?? I bet one does somewhere), scanners, there are a number of cases where it makes sense and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
With a network adapter falling back to a lower speed is not always desirable. Sure, a 10Gbps Ethernet falling back to 5Gbps might not be a deal killer. If you are investing in a 40Gbps network adapter then having it not fallback to 10 or 5 Gbps USB speeds isn't going to be deal killer. Such people might even prefer it to not work since it exposes a very real connection problem rather than hide it with a fallback. Audio devices, printers, and many other devices are such low bandwidth that there is no need to supporting Thunderbolt, USB 3 or even USB 2 speeds is enough. I could be convinced to give in on the network adapter, since falling back to a lower speed on a network might be desirable in some cases, as opposed to not working at all, much like the hard drive, but the other examples you gave are not likely to see an advantage from the higher data rates of Thunderbolt over USB. Falling back to USB 3 is nonsensical since its nonsensical to have Thunderbolt in the first place.
When did we start to see this regression into USB-C confusion? Where you needed device or protocol specific USB-C cables?
When Thunderbolt 3 co-opted the USB-C port, of course. Since then, I haven't bought a single USB-C device that didn't include a cable and a warning to use only the included cable, as other cables may not work.
I'm not so sure. I can understand why someone selling a Thunderbolt device might say to use the cable that came with it. This is not much different than someone selling a USB 3 device and saying to use the cable that came with it. I've seen this going back to old serial devices, parallel port devices, and on and on when the quality of the cable and/or differing pin outs on cables with the same connector might be a problem. The old DB-25 might be serial, parallel, SCSI, or something completely different.
Where I'm frustrated is seeing cables that will support Thunderbolt 3 but not support USB 3 at it's full 10Gbps, or even 5Gbps. I've read that Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB 3, says so on Intel's Thunderbolt FAQ. https://thunderbolttechnology....
I thought that to mean that since Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB 3 then a cable that meets the Thunderbolt 3 specification would support USB 3 at "super speed" data rates. I was disappointed to see a Thunderbolt 3 cable, on Intel's website, that did not support USB 3, maybe not even USB 2. Careful reading of the claims tells me that the *PORT* specification is a superset of USB 3, but that is not claimed of the cables. Intel created this confusion by not enforcing this idea of Thunderbolt 3 as a superset of USB 3 on the specifications for the cables. Might this enforcement mean more expensive cables? I assume so. That's probably why Intel allows this confusion to exist, the cables already cost quite a bit and by allowing Thunderbolt only cables they can better compete on cost. This comes at the price of confusing even their technically informed customers.
So many manufacturers have non-compliant cables and devices that finding ones that work as they should may be nearly impossible.
This is where the USB and Thunderbolt groups could have worked together a little better. They could have come up with some sort of labeling or color-coding requirement for ports and cables, such that you could glance at it and know w
My understanding was that the active circuitry required to achieve 40gbps with a Thunderbolt longer than 1.5ft (my StarTech cables are all 3ft or longer and have active circuitry to support full speed transfer, by the way) is what prevented the passing of USB data.
My understanding was that every Thunderbolt 3 active cable chip had to support falling back to USB 3 if plugged into a USB 3 only USB-C port. I now see that is not the case. Or, perhaps, the people that make these cables do not adhere to the Thunderbolt 3 specification but somehow avoid getting sued over it because they avoid using any claims to be "certified" or whatever.
Short passive cables that are of sufficient quality (and connect all the pins, some apparently don't) will support Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 at full speeds. I have to wonder how those longer active cables work where they get only half the full data rate from both USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3, do they have dedicated lanes for Thunderbolt and USB 3? As in of the four lanes two are for USB 3.0 and the other two for Thunderbolt/DisplayPort? That is apparently how the USB-C only (not Thunderbolt) Macbook works, a pair of lanes for USB 3 and a pair of lanes for DisplayPort.
I have no Thunderbolt 3 devices myself so I had no need to look for such cables. I didn't realize this was such a problem until I started to look for long/active Thunderbolt 3 cables. I've seen charge only cables (cables with USB power delivery connectors on both ends that pass no data), USB 2 cables (passive cables that are sometimes called "charge only" but do in fact pass USB 2 signals for power delivery negotiation), USB 3.0 (I guess they only connect two of the four high speed data lanes, or use the other two for DisplayPort/HDMI video), and short/passive USB 3.1/Thunderbolt cables. Active cables that support both full data rates for both USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3 do seem to be as rare as unicorns. Everything I've read until yesterday told me that to meet the Thunderbolt 3 specification the ports and cables had to fall back to USB 3.1. I have to wonder how they even make these non-compliant cables since it seems the chips for Thunderbolt 3 must have USB 3.1 support, do they use two Thunderbolt 2 chips on each end? Is that cheaper than just getting a single fully compliant Thunderbolt 3 chip?
I do see your frustration now.
When it comes to devices falling back to USB 3 if the cable or host system don't support the Thunderbolt protocol does not make much sense to me. What devices would you want/need such fallback? A hard drive might make sense I guess. When it comes to things like PCIe breakout boxes, 4K displays, high speed network devices, and such the falling back to USB 3 does not make sense since the reason for getting a Thunderbolt device is because you NEED that data rate for the device to do what it's designed to do. An external GPU that falls back from 40Gbps to 5GBps is quite likely not very useful, better to just not work and alert the user to get the right cable than try to squeeze an elephant through a firehose. I guess that there is a non-zero number of people that would rather see their devices work at a crippled data rate than not at all but I suspect that this binary of work/not-work is preferred by those that make the devices to reduce costs (don't have to have circuits to support fall back) and reduce tech support calls ("Why does your device suck so bad!?!?!").
I have seen hard drives that support USB 3 and Thunderbolt on a single USB-C port before but I cannot find them now. I'll see drives with Thunderbolt 2 (mini-DisplayPort style) and USB 3 ports (wide micro-B style) and include USB-C cables for one or both. I've even seen drives with three USB-C ports, one for Thunderbolt 3, one for Thunderbolt 3 pass through, and a completely separate USB-C port for USB 3. It seems we've gone backwards on getting one port to rule them all.
When did we start to see this regression into USB-C confusion? Where you needed device or pr
When I criticize trickle-down economics, I'm talking primarily about the empirical results, which were to make the rich richer and largely detach the workers from productivity increases.
Reagan's tax cuts decreased government revenue
The tax revenue as a percentage of GDP decreased but total revenue increased. What also decreased was unemployment and inflation. The workers saw these benefits, and relatively quickly too. The first year or so sucked but things got better. A lot better. Homelessness was a big problem and then it wasn't. There were still homeless people, because there will always be homeless people.
Actions can be evil and yet profitable.
I won't dispute that. Profit itself is not evil, it is required for a healthy economy. People must make money. A non-profit corporation can still make a profit, but there are rules on how it can be spent, invested, and such. Being a non-profit does not mean the corporation is inherently beneficial either. Actions can be evil and not profitable.
Let's get back to this...
Nope, the profit is unnecessary. Wages paid are not profits.
Now you are just playing with words. Sure wages are not leaglly profits but someone got a profit. People made money on this "non-profit" corporation. That's profit. It may not be profit that is taxed under the federal income tax laws but it is profit. If a non-profit entity makes too much money then they have to get rid of it somehow so it doesn't show as a legally defined "profit" on their books, so they might be rid of it by giving all the employees a bonus. Someone, a lot of someones, made money. That's profit.
The problem here is that Intel co-opted the USB Type-C connector for Thunderbolt.
Not really. Since Thunderbolt falls back gracefully to USB3 and USB2 for backward compatibility then Thunderbolt 3 is effectively just a different name for USB 4.0. Still USB but faster, essentially.
To me the problem is in having USB-C support three (or is it four now?) different video alternate modes. There's DisplayPort, MHL, and HDMI. Then there's different revisions of each of these modes to support different resolutions. Getting the right cable or adapter to attach any given computer and display together could be a nightmare if there isn't a specifications sheet for everything.
Unfortunately not only are the devices are incompatible but the fucking cables are too. In short fuck Intel for Thunderbolt for a sub-par standard no one needs and is breaking the universe.
Again, I see this as an issue of choosing a cable that's USB 3 or "USB 4"/Thunderbolt. So long as you get cables that support the highest speed of your devices then you're good. No more confusing than getting the right Ethernet cables, IMHO. If you find getting Cat6 vs. Cat 5 confusing then I can't help you.
Having power over the cables complicates things if having more than 15 watts is important. This really only comes into play if you have a laptop with USB-C charging, and even then it's going to come with the right cable. I don't know if this is any worse than having a separate power port or not. What's the alternative? MagSafe? That's a nice port for power but Apple specific. I'm not sure anything else would be an improvement.
Qualcomm also has quick-charge which is incompatible with USB power delivery.
That's not Intel's or Apple's fault. Blame Qualcomm for breaking the specification when they didn't have to.
He also complains with no specificity on which products caused what problems. At least with that kind of information one might be able to avoid some of the problems he's seen. Would it have been that hard to include that information? Was there some NDA or advertiser pressure preventing him from giving more detail? His ending on maybe fixing these problems in the future, but likely not, is a bit of a downer.
One way to look at it is that by not giving any specifics on the problematic products no one can prove that he's full of shit and simply bought cheap crap, doesn't know what he's doing, making things up for effect, or some combination of them all.
Presuming, of course, that you have the right cable and the right power adapter. Not all USB-C cables support all of the power delivery standards, and there are several incompatible power-delivery standards. If you pick the wrong ones, they'll plug in, but they won't workâ"or they'll work improperly, possibly draining your device instead of charging it. And if you buy a third-party cable, there's a good chance it's a fire risk.
How is this different than most any other pairing of a third party charger with your device? You need to match the connector, voltage, and current to match. With USB-C there is at least the chance any given random charger will charge at a reduced rate, but at least it will charge.
I'm not sure what to think of the fire risk comment. My first thought was don't buy cheap crap. Before USB (A, B, or C) there would be any of hundreds of connectors you'd need to charge your phone. Assuming you didn't get a cheap charger and cable then the worst that would happen is it doesn't work. As I stated before there's a good chance you'll get your device to charge, if slowly.
But support for all the alternate modesâ"power delivery, Thunderbolt, HDMI, DisplayPort, DisplayLink, MHL, analog audio, USB 3â"depends on whether the manufacturer decided to support them, and how well they did. There's nothing about the jack to tell you whether any of those modes should be expected to work. It's plug-and-pray.
I don't like that either. The USB people really screwed up with supporting so many different video protocols. They should have stayed with one or two, or none at all.
And given that half the point of USB-C is a smaller connector that takes up less space, so portable devices can be more portable... the need for a dongle to connect just about any device makes USB-Câ"only laptops counterproductive.
I disagree on this point. I like small laptops. I also like having Ethernet and serial ports. Those two things don't go together well. What I can do though is put dongles on the cords and put the cords in my bag with the laptop. The dongles aren't even really dongles at that point, they just become part of the cable. If all you need to use are some USB-A devices then get a three pack of USB-A to USB-C adapters for $10 and put them on the devices. Such cheap adapters are USB 2.0 but if you need USB 3 speeds then you might want to invest in a proper cable, or even a new device, at that point.
With four USB-C/Thunderbolt ports I'd have a port for charging, a port for my serial cable, one for my Ethernet, and one for my mouse. If for some reason I need to go beyond that then I'd be in a situation much like any laptop made in the last 5 years or so and have to get a hub or dock.
And matters get worse when your device only has one USB-C port; any dongle you attach has to be compatible with the right charging standards too, which is nowhere near a given.
I've gotten tired of carrying 6 pound laptops around. I'll take the 2 pound laptop and then be able to choose which adapters I might need. Also, again, not any different than life before USB with the many different chargers, voltages, and amp ratings. At least I'm not tied to some vendor specific charger port that only the manufacturer provides.
At least when a device uses Micro-USB for charging, you can use any standard 2.1A USB charger with it. A few companies have power strips with built-in four-port USB-A chargers that work great for this. With USB-C, you're probably going to be stuck trying to make sure you remember which generic-looking charger came with a given device, since it's the only one you know will work right.
Micro-USB maxed out at 12 watts. I've seen some rated for 15 watts but those violated the USB specification. Smart phones got smarter and with it came greater power requirements. Micro-USB was about to die anyway bec
There are Thunderbolt 3 Cables that do in fact fall back to USB3 when used with a USB only device. It has to as it's part of the specification to support both USB 3, USB 2, power delivery, and DisplayPort. Those that do not fall back to USB 3 are violating the Thunderbolt specifications. Don't buy cables that don't meet specifications.
I searched for "thunderbolt 3 cable" on Google and here's some of the results. Check the specifications yourself.
Sure it is. How else do you motivate people to invest? Tell them they would have the same amount of money they started with? Oh, but they get to help people, that might motivate them. If you tell them they'll lose money, but help people, that might work too. What would work even better is to tell people they will make money AND help others.
Even corporations that are legally non-profits can make a lot of people a lot of money. The NFL was a non-profit until the public outcry over what they thought was an abuse of the system forced them to change.
You can argue on this all you like. The best you will get from me is an agreement to disagree. If there is no profit then investors will leave for profitable ventures or because they just plain run out of money.
Are you going to claim that trickle-down economics works?
Of course it does. These people will buy products and services, and people will work to produce those products and services. The people that know how to produce value will gain wealth, and when they die they will hand it down to their kids. How does trickle down economics NOT work?
I'll tell you how excessive taxes don't work. It takes money from people that know how to make money and gives it to people that don't know how to make money. These people will have an incentive to not produce value because the government pays them regardless if they produce. The people that know how to produce now have an incentive to not produce because the government now takes every extra bit they earn. If they cannot keep what they earn they they will have the same whether they work or not. So, they will make the natural choice to not work. It's not that all work stops, people still need to eat, but instead of making money they are just paying the bills.
Taxes should be for the funding of the government, and nothing more. There is a theory of maximum return on taxes that I cannot recall the name of right now. If taxes are 0% the government gets nothing, because zero times anything is nothing. If taxes are 100% the people won't work because they also know that zero times anything is nothing. If the government wants to maximize tax revenue then taxes need to be low. People used to think that high taxes maximized tax revenue until Reagan came along and lowered taxes. Now people had money to spare on things like cars, houses, and fancy clothes, and everyone had more money to spend. Yes, the wealthy got wealthier, but so did everyone else. With more people making more money even a low tax rate means more revenue for the government. Many politicians know this. They almost have to. They must not care, being so fucked in the head that they'd rather buy votes for their next election than see a stable economy for the next generation.
If you are going to make a "cops are pigs" joke then maybe a comment on "when pigs fly" is better.
I can just think of this hoverbike running out of charge while on the move over a crowded area. It's coming down, maybe with the blades still spinning, and it will make a mess. With enough charge for only 25 minutes it will be too easy to run out on even a short run out to a location and then it will have to find a place to land safely. If the area is too crowded for police on motorcycles, cars, or horses to get to then it's too crowded to land this thing. If they want police to be able to fly overhead and drop in to serve in emergencies then perhaps a cargo helicopter with rappel lines.
Unlike this hover bike a helicopter has a much better chance of being able to actually recover the officer and/or anyone in need of evacuation. Put a recovery pulley like on Coast Guard search and rescue helicopters to bring people up. No new technology needed, only a sane evaluation of the problem being solved.
Lots of hardware problems are fixed in software. Perhaps "fixed" is not the right word, perhaps "addressed" or "mitigated".
My brother mentioned his new truck didn't squeal the tires like his old truck, despite having a more powerful engine. He found out that the engine control unit would not allow a rapid increase in engine power, overriding the throttle input. This was done because the manufacturer found out that if there was slack in the linkages and the power was increased to quickly the parts of the drive train slamming together would cause premature wear. Rather than redesign the drive train to handle the larger engine torque with heavier components the engine control was changed to prevent this wear. This gave the impression of a less powerful engine since the truck would not squeal its tires as readily or push passengers into their seats like older models. It also made their trucks last longer, reduced warranty claims, and made the makers more money in making the trucks more valuable to those that lacked a lead foot.
That's one example of a software fix for a hardware problem. Perhaps not ideal but if software can make a hardware problem seem to disappear then I have to ask, was the problem really in the hardware? Maybe the problem was in the software from the start. In my example of the truck throttle control I could just as easily say that the software did not account properly for the limits of the hardware, that the software was needlessly stressing the drive train. As a wise man once said, it depends on your point of view.
That's what a lot of people do not understand. A company cannot provide food, shelter, medicine, or whatever unless they make a profit. If there is no profit in it then they cannot pay their wages, pay back investors, and have money left over for when times are thin or to invest in expansion.
Profit is good. Greed is a natural instinct. People understand greed. It is with greed that businesses stay in business to feed another natural instinct, charity. When people have enough to see to their own needs they tend to see to the needs of others. Those that don't see charity as a virtue can be tolerated, and may in fact be necessary for human survival. People with unrestrained charity are also seen as not right in the head. Giving their food up to the point they starve themselves is not healthy, for themselves or society.
I keep seeing people claim we should increase taxed the wealthy because "they can afford it". What is that other than greed? These people see others with more so they send the government to take it from them. That's just theft by proxy.
I remember a history teacher in high school making fun of "trickle down economics". He said that the taxes on the wealthy was reduced on the theory that the wealthy would use that tax money to invest in more business but they instead bought expensive cars, went on vacations, and generally lived it up. I bought it, trickle down economics was bad. Then, years later, something made me think of this some more. These wealthy people put a lot of people to work building those cars they bought, making their lavish parties, carrying their clubs at golf courses, and so on. They still invested in the economy. Even if they stuffed all that money under a mattress it still helped the economy since that was a store of wealth that could be added back when they couldn't afford those big parties and golf trips. They'd still have to buy food. Even if it stayed there until they died that money ended up in the hands of their children where they'd spend it on food, housing, clothes, and of course luxuries like caviar, lobster, plane tickets, and tips to the golf caddies.
We cannot grow total wealth without getting wealth disparity. Taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the poor rewards poverty. That's not the signal we should be sending as a society. Punishing the wealthy only because they are wealthy is paving made of good intentions that leads us down a road to where we don't want to go.
Whenever I see someone use the term "merkin" I think of Dr. Strangelove and the character President Muffley. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We got our own President Merkin Muffley in office now. Think about why that is. As screwed up the Republican Party is for getting Trump to be POTUS the Democratic Party is even more screwed up for putting the only person that could lose to him on the ballot.
Blame those pouring trillions into military & commercial instead of real human problems and not tech geniuses.
Right! We should forget investing in military and commercial products and invest money in solving problems like getting food, clothing, shelter, and communications! What has military investment brought us? I mean other than GPS? We need ways to get food from people who grow it to those who need it. I mean that government funded GPS and highway system are nice but we need people to talk to each other. That military project that brought us the Internet is great but what about satellites? I mean we got to space on the back of military funding into rockets but what did we get from that? I mean other than cheap commercial air transport. I mean the military funding got us to space, an interstate highway system, commercial airlines, but what about... SHIPS! The military didn't do any funding on shipping did they? I mean other than after World War II handing over the factories and machines to build warships to commercial ship builders. And giving factories for tanks and warplanes so they could make passenger cars, farm tractors, air transport planes, and those ships I mentioned. Other than all of that what has military spending brought us? Other than highways, the Internet, airplanes, GPS, ships, satellite communications, what has military spending got us? Did military spending get us cheap computers that we use everyday? FUCK!
Enough snark. Just about everything we enjoy in modern society comes from developments in military spending. Commercial spending does the same. They develop products for the wealthy because they have the money to spend on these things. As they figure out how to make them cheaper and better they trickle down to those with less money. This spending by governments and commerce is how we have what we have.Taking that away helps no one.
If there aren't enough electric used cars in 2025, people will buy used gasoline and diesel cars. No real problem.
If there's no import of ICE cars allowed then prices of used cars will rise. This will deny the less wealthy access to cars, people will drive cars in poor repair longer, with the lowered standard of living that comes with it as people deal with lowered mobility, higher pollution, and lowered safety of vehicles. If ICE cars are allowed to be imported you'd still see some rises in the cost of used vehicles, and everything that follows from it, but not near as much. But then if used ICE cars are allowed to be imported then they've done next to nothing to reducing the number of ICE cars on the road.
Given the EU, I can't see market conditions in the Netherlands dominating the price for a commodity.
The Netherlands is not unique in wanting to reduce the number of ICE vehicles on the road. The market for used ICE cars will be shared among other EU nations that have similar bans.
The only way to make a ban on ICE cars work is to reduce the cost of electric cars where everyone, not just the wealthy, can afford them. Once that happens then people will just gravitate to electric cars because they are cheaper and the ban is largely unnecessary.
If the government bans something, and people are not offered something they see as a viable alternative, then people will find ways around the ban.
Since people in the Netherlands have the ability to vote out these idiots I don't expect this to get very far. Once people start to see the prices of cars go up this ban will disappear or get scaled back.
Just to give you an idea, 2kW of power on your standard 12V car requires a current of 167A.
I think I just found where a lot of the power is consumed. 167 amps is a lot of current, that means I^2*R losses.
The total power of the individual pieces and parts might be far less than 2kW, but add in losses to heat in the wires because everything is running on 12-14 volts and that might just add up to quite a bit of power loss.
I know this is not a direct citation but an article about a report but it's the best I could find so far. http://jacksonville.com/opinio...
Brookings whittled down a lot of analysis into three simple rules. You can avoid poverty by:
1. Graduating from high school.
2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
3. Having a full-time job.
If you do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent. Meanwhile, you'll have a 74 percent chance of being in the middle class.
Applies to everyone These rules apply to all races and ethnic groups. Breaking these rules is becoming more commonplace, unfortunately, for all racial groups.
By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms -- dropped out, got married before 21 and had children out of wedlock and didn't have a full-time job -- had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.
Did you ever think why monogamy was not the norm in pre-industrial societies? Perhaps it was this lack of family structure that kept them from advancing. And saying people "do fine" without a single partner is either a snapshot of their life before the downward spiral, or the 10% or so that were smart enough and/or had enough of another family structure to prevent their fall. Society is not so fragile that a few people with bad behaviors can bring it down. If there is a widespread loss of the family structure then society can spiral into crime and poverty for everyone.
This need for a monogamous relationship is not "obsolete" or "old fashioned", it's the societal structure we've evolved into. Given enough time we might see humanity and society evolve into something else but that's not going to happen in a couple generations. Families relying on daycare and babysitters is likely quite dangerous to society. Children need guidance, not just a someone to warehouse them during the day while the parents go off to work. The best guidance, with rare exceptions, comes from the parents. And children need male and female guidance. They need to learn from both. Children with a single biological parent in the house have very high tendencies for crime, especially men. Women with a single biological parent raising them tend to have children before getting married, therefore raising children with a criminal tendency.
This is not racial, but we do see certain races falling into poverty more than others. Lots of people came up with lots of reasons to describe the cause of this. In general though it is cultural. There is a culture in some communities that do not see a problem with children before marriage, do not see the value in an education, and lack a work ethic. Break this cycle of poverty by social pressure, not government policy (though government policy does reflect societal norms), and once the cycle is broken there is a built in mechanism to prevent it from coming back.
You assume that by 2029 electric cars will dominate the market so that people won't revolt over the inability to purchase new internal combustion cars. If electric cars can't compete in the market then there will be people keeping their gas burners longer, raising their prices. This will make all car prices soar, old and new.
Electric cars just cost more than gas burners. I don't see even 15 years of development fixing this. We are hitting some very real physical limits on battery technology, we can't make them much cheaper, lighter, or more energy dense. For there to be enough used electric cars in 2039 to compete with gasoline cars then they have to be selling in quantity now. Maybe we could see this ramp up in electric vehicles happen in the next ten years, but I doubt it.
They have elections in the Netherlands and if people are unhappy with this policy it will go away. I just saw something about how wind and solar subsidies are likely to end in Australia because people got tired of paying more for electricity and seeing blackouts come more often. Maybe the people making the windmills will be able to dominate the market, it just won't be because the government mandated it.
So, when you say the best things happen when.gov gets out of the way, perhaps you should say, the best things happen when.gov works in partnership with innovators.
The government should seek the best value for its money like any responsible buyer should. Before SpaceX there just wasn't much for competition. I am pleased that SpaceX was successful in getting a government contract. I am also pleased that the government now has leverage on the older companies to offer better value for their money. I mean *MY* money and *YOUR* money, because the government doesn't own that money, the taxpayers' do.
I hear complaints about "cost plus" contracts that the government offers contractors. Well, how else can this be done? This is much like an art patron commissioning an art piece, the artist will want to make sure that there is a profit in it since this is something that must be unique. The development of this piece cannot be mass produced later and sold in volume to make up for the time and effort it took to create. How can this be solved? I'm not sure it can. That is unless the government is willing to see F-22 fighter jets made in mass quantities and sold to any nation willing to pay the asking price.
The Space Shuttle program was a victim of this, it was built to adhere to military requirements and therefore could not be sold. Maybe nothing of military value was in the Shuttles themselves but it's unlikely any government other than the USA would have a need for it.
Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with some tax incentives to help develop a new clean technology.
Sure, I can agree with that. The problem is when the "bootstrap" money becomes the only thing holding up the industry. Electric cars seem to be doing well right now so taking away that subsidy is not likely to hurt, it may actually help since it forces them to run leaner and meaner to stay in business. The wind and solar power industries seem to rely just a little too much on these funds that were supposed to be for development. Whenever someone in government even suggests that maybe, perhaps, at some point in the future, that the subsidies should end I see my mailbox fill up with fliers telling me to call my congresscritters to keep the subsidies. That just makes me want to call them to urge them to stop the subsidies. These subsidies have been in place for decades now, it's time to make them go away.
The internal combustion engine has had a good run but that run needs to come to a close. They are dirty, noisy, inefficient and limited to oil based fuels.
But what about the algae based diesel that the "greenies" keep talking about? Or the ethanol that we can get from corn, sugar beets, cellulose, or whatever? People were running their cars on ethanol before Prohibition, but the ban on alcohol killed that. I could argue that Prohibition set back bio-fuel research by 50 years. There's a group in the US Navy researching synthesized hydrocarbons, no oil from the ground needed. This Navy process uses nuclear power and seawater to create jet fuel, fuel that's been successfully tested on internal combustion engines. Fuel that is carbon neutral, contains no sulfur, and generally burns very cleanly.
Using fuel that doesn't come out of the ground means being clean. Efficiency is a matter of perspective, 30% efficiency might not be great to some people but if you are constrained by volume and mass like in a vehicle then it doesn't look so bad. Noisy? I'll give you that.
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I can only imagine that cutting through extra layers of fat has to inconvenience the surgeon. People that smoke will react to the drugs differently. People that smoke have a suppressed immune system, creating complications afterwards and might mean more surgery later. Smoking reduces lung capacity, making things like delivering oxygen more complicated. Smoking affects blood flow, which has to impact the surgery somewhat.
My favorite argument against socialized medicine. It turns individual's bodies into a public problem. Keep your laws off my body.
Sounds a lot like any other socialist program, gains are private but costs are public. I'm not obligated to pay for your health care. If you ask nicely though then maybe I'll just give you the money you need. If the person asking is obviously overweight, smokes, and is asking for my money then I might be less inclined to be charitable.
My favorite argument against socialized medicine is the price control aspect. Price controls are very bad for any commodity, and health care is a commodity. How is socialized medicine a price control? I'm glad you asked (or rather I'll tell you even if you didn't ask). Imagine someone has knee surgery. The hospital goes to the government and asks to be compensated. The government will respond with something like, that's too much so we'll only pay for this much, or that's below our maximum so we'll give what you asked. What happens for every knee surgery afterward? They all ask the government for the same compensation regardless of the real costs. There's no incentive to reduce costs or improve the quality of the work because they get paid the same regardless. So long as the hospital doesn't do outright fraud or the quality of the work is far below some government standard of quality there's no real oversight of the work and what was paid.
With private medicine people pay the price for the work provided. If they want a more experienced surgeon then they can offer to pay more for the surgery. If they cannot pay as much then they will likely get a less experienced surgeon, a not as nice recovery room, or whatever to save on costs. Insurance companies have a similar effect on this, they set the prices they are willing to pay and so hospitals will do what they can to get the money they need to stay in business. That can mean charging $20 for a single tablet of Tylenol, and they can get away with this because it's "prescribed medication by the attending surgeon".
I'll believe people are serious about CAGW when I see the US start to built nuclear reactors at a rate that is equal to that of shutting down old coal and nuclear. A quick Google search tells me that 6GW of coal was retired in the first half of 2016. If we assume a new nuclear power plant has a capacity of 1 GW (which is pretty common) then we should see a new nuclear power plant in the USA every month. My quick search only verified what I've heard elsewhere, we will need 1 GW of new nuclear power capacity from now until the sun goes out just to keep up with current demand as old power plants are retired.
Wind is nice, I guess. It's not too expensive, compared to what we pay now for electricity, but being unreliable has it's costs. Solar on a utility scale is just plain stupid, it's too expensive, too unreliable, and takes up a lot of valuable real estate that'd be put to better use growing food, mitigating floods, and so on. Use hydro when and where you can but that goes only so far. Bio-fuels are just an environmental disaster, I cannot understand how "environmentalists" consider that an option. Nuclear has a zero carbon footprint (or as close to zero as any other "zero carbon" energy source), it's safe, it's inexpensive, and requires no more resources than coal or natural gas, and a fraction of the resources as wind and solar.
One great thing about nuclear is it can take on a hurricane and keep going, recent events prove this. Windmills and solar panels don't handle these storms well. A nuclear power plant tends to be in a large concrete building that even an airplane slamming into it won't stop it. Wind and solar are necessarily exposed to damage.
It boggles the mind that we've ignored nuclear power for so long. I guess the powers that be just aren't taking the threat of CAGW seriously, so why should I?
psychopathic capitalism
What does that even mean?
When it comes to devices falling back to USB 3 if the cable or host system don't support the Thunderbolt protocol does not make much sense to me. What devices would you want/need such fallback? A hard drive might make sense I guess.
Hard drives, network adapters, audio interfaces, printers (do Thunderbolt printers exist?? I bet one does somewhere), scanners, there are a number of cases where it makes sense and those are just the ones I can come up with off the top of my head.
With a network adapter falling back to a lower speed is not always desirable. Sure, a 10Gbps Ethernet falling back to 5Gbps might not be a deal killer. If you are investing in a 40Gbps network adapter then having it not fallback to 10 or 5 Gbps USB speeds isn't going to be deal killer. Such people might even prefer it to not work since it exposes a very real connection problem rather than hide it with a fallback. Audio devices, printers, and many other devices are such low bandwidth that there is no need to supporting Thunderbolt, USB 3 or even USB 2 speeds is enough. I could be convinced to give in on the network adapter, since falling back to a lower speed on a network might be desirable in some cases, as opposed to not working at all, much like the hard drive, but the other examples you gave are not likely to see an advantage from the higher data rates of Thunderbolt over USB. Falling back to USB 3 is nonsensical since its nonsensical to have Thunderbolt in the first place.
When did we start to see this regression into USB-C confusion? Where you needed device or protocol specific USB-C cables?
When Thunderbolt 3 co-opted the USB-C port, of course. Since then, I haven't bought a single USB-C device that didn't include a cable and a warning to use only the included cable, as other cables may not work.
I'm not so sure. I can understand why someone selling a Thunderbolt device might say to use the cable that came with it. This is not much different than someone selling a USB 3 device and saying to use the cable that came with it. I've seen this going back to old serial devices, parallel port devices, and on and on when the quality of the cable and/or differing pin outs on cables with the same connector might be a problem. The old DB-25 might be serial, parallel, SCSI, or something completely different.
Where I'm frustrated is seeing cables that will support Thunderbolt 3 but not support USB 3 at it's full 10Gbps, or even 5Gbps. I've read that Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB 3, says so on Intel's Thunderbolt FAQ.
https://thunderbolttechnology....
I thought that to mean that since Thunderbolt 3 is a superset of USB 3 then a cable that meets the Thunderbolt 3 specification would support USB 3 at "super speed" data rates. I was disappointed to see a Thunderbolt 3 cable, on Intel's website, that did not support USB 3, maybe not even USB 2. Careful reading of the claims tells me that the *PORT* specification is a superset of USB 3, but that is not claimed of the cables. Intel created this confusion by not enforcing this idea of Thunderbolt 3 as a superset of USB 3 on the specifications for the cables. Might this enforcement mean more expensive cables? I assume so. That's probably why Intel allows this confusion to exist, the cables already cost quite a bit and by allowing Thunderbolt only cables they can better compete on cost. This comes at the price of confusing even their technically informed customers.
So many manufacturers have non-compliant cables and devices that finding ones that work as they should may be nearly impossible.
This is where the USB and Thunderbolt groups could have worked together a little better. They could have come up with some sort of labeling or color-coding requirement for ports and cables, such that you could glance at it and know w
My understanding was that the active circuitry required to achieve 40gbps with a Thunderbolt longer than 1.5ft (my StarTech cables are all 3ft or longer and have active circuitry to support full speed transfer, by the way) is what prevented the passing of USB data.
My understanding was that every Thunderbolt 3 active cable chip had to support falling back to USB 3 if plugged into a USB 3 only USB-C port. I now see that is not the case. Or, perhaps, the people that make these cables do not adhere to the Thunderbolt 3 specification but somehow avoid getting sued over it because they avoid using any claims to be "certified" or whatever.
Short passive cables that are of sufficient quality (and connect all the pins, some apparently don't) will support Thunderbolt 3 and USB 3 at full speeds. I have to wonder how those longer active cables work where they get only half the full data rate from both USB 3 and Thunderbolt 3, do they have dedicated lanes for Thunderbolt and USB 3? As in of the four lanes two are for USB 3.0 and the other two for Thunderbolt/DisplayPort? That is apparently how the USB-C only (not Thunderbolt) Macbook works, a pair of lanes for USB 3 and a pair of lanes for DisplayPort.
I have no Thunderbolt 3 devices myself so I had no need to look for such cables. I didn't realize this was such a problem until I started to look for long/active Thunderbolt 3 cables. I've seen charge only cables (cables with USB power delivery connectors on both ends that pass no data), USB 2 cables (passive cables that are sometimes called "charge only" but do in fact pass USB 2 signals for power delivery negotiation), USB 3.0 (I guess they only connect two of the four high speed data lanes, or use the other two for DisplayPort/HDMI video), and short/passive USB 3.1/Thunderbolt cables. Active cables that support both full data rates for both USB 3.1 and Thunderbolt 3 do seem to be as rare as unicorns. Everything I've read until yesterday told me that to meet the Thunderbolt 3 specification the ports and cables had to fall back to USB 3.1. I have to wonder how they even make these non-compliant cables since it seems the chips for Thunderbolt 3 must have USB 3.1 support, do they use two Thunderbolt 2 chips on each end? Is that cheaper than just getting a single fully compliant Thunderbolt 3 chip?
I do see your frustration now.
When it comes to devices falling back to USB 3 if the cable or host system don't support the Thunderbolt protocol does not make much sense to me. What devices would you want/need such fallback? A hard drive might make sense I guess. When it comes to things like PCIe breakout boxes, 4K displays, high speed network devices, and such the falling back to USB 3 does not make sense since the reason for getting a Thunderbolt device is because you NEED that data rate for the device to do what it's designed to do. An external GPU that falls back from 40Gbps to 5GBps is quite likely not very useful, better to just not work and alert the user to get the right cable than try to squeeze an elephant through a firehose. I guess that there is a non-zero number of people that would rather see their devices work at a crippled data rate than not at all but I suspect that this binary of work/not-work is preferred by those that make the devices to reduce costs (don't have to have circuits to support fall back) and reduce tech support calls ("Why does your device suck so bad!?!?!").
I have seen hard drives that support USB 3 and Thunderbolt on a single USB-C port before but I cannot find them now. I'll see drives with Thunderbolt 2 (mini-DisplayPort style) and USB 3 ports (wide micro-B style) and include USB-C cables for one or both. I've even seen drives with three USB-C ports, one for Thunderbolt 3, one for Thunderbolt 3 pass through, and a completely separate USB-C port for USB 3. It seems we've gone backwards on getting one port to rule them all.
When did we start to see this regression into USB-C confusion? Where you needed device or pr
When I criticize trickle-down economics, I'm talking primarily about the empirical results, which were to make the rich richer and largely detach the workers from productivity increases.
Reagan's tax cuts decreased government revenue
The tax revenue as a percentage of GDP decreased but total revenue increased. What also decreased was unemployment and inflation. The workers saw these benefits, and relatively quickly too. The first year or so sucked but things got better. A lot better. Homelessness was a big problem and then it wasn't. There were still homeless people, because there will always be homeless people.
Actions can be evil and yet profitable.
I won't dispute that. Profit itself is not evil, it is required for a healthy economy. People must make money. A non-profit corporation can still make a profit, but there are rules on how it can be spent, invested, and such. Being a non-profit does not mean the corporation is inherently beneficial either. Actions can be evil and not profitable.
Let's get back to this...
Nope, the profit is unnecessary. Wages paid are not profits.
Now you are just playing with words. Sure wages are not leaglly profits but someone got a profit. People made money on this "non-profit" corporation. That's profit. It may not be profit that is taxed under the federal income tax laws but it is profit. If a non-profit entity makes too much money then they have to get rid of it somehow so it doesn't show as a legally defined "profit" on their books, so they might be rid of it by giving all the employees a bonus. Someone, a lot of someones, made money. That's profit.
The problem here is that Intel co-opted the USB Type-C connector for Thunderbolt.
Not really. Since Thunderbolt falls back gracefully to USB3 and USB2 for backward compatibility then Thunderbolt 3 is effectively just a different name for USB 4.0. Still USB but faster, essentially.
To me the problem is in having USB-C support three (or is it four now?) different video alternate modes. There's DisplayPort, MHL, and HDMI. Then there's different revisions of each of these modes to support different resolutions. Getting the right cable or adapter to attach any given computer and display together could be a nightmare if there isn't a specifications sheet for everything.
Unfortunately not only are the devices are incompatible but the fucking cables are too. In short fuck Intel for Thunderbolt for a sub-par standard no one needs and is breaking the universe.
Again, I see this as an issue of choosing a cable that's USB 3 or "USB 4"/Thunderbolt. So long as you get cables that support the highest speed of your devices then you're good. No more confusing than getting the right Ethernet cables, IMHO. If you find getting Cat6 vs. Cat 5 confusing then I can't help you.
Having power over the cables complicates things if having more than 15 watts is important. This really only comes into play if you have a laptop with USB-C charging, and even then it's going to come with the right cable. I don't know if this is any worse than having a separate power port or not. What's the alternative? MagSafe? That's a nice port for power but Apple specific. I'm not sure anything else would be an improvement.
Qualcomm also has quick-charge which is incompatible with USB power delivery.
That's not Intel's or Apple's fault. Blame Qualcomm for breaking the specification when they didn't have to.
He also complains with no specificity on which products caused what problems. At least with that kind of information one might be able to avoid some of the problems he's seen. Would it have been that hard to include that information? Was there some NDA or advertiser pressure preventing him from giving more detail? His ending on maybe fixing these problems in the future, but likely not, is a bit of a downer.
One way to look at it is that by not giving any specifics on the problematic products no one can prove that he's full of shit and simply bought cheap crap, doesn't know what he's doing, making things up for effect, or some combination of them all.
Presuming, of course, that you have the right cable and the right power adapter. Not all USB-C cables support all of the power delivery standards, and there are several incompatible power-delivery standards. If you pick the wrong ones, they'll plug in, but they won't workâ"or they'll work improperly, possibly draining your device instead of charging it. And if you buy a third-party cable, there's a good chance it's a fire risk.
How is this different than most any other pairing of a third party charger with your device? You need to match the connector, voltage, and current to match. With USB-C there is at least the chance any given random charger will charge at a reduced rate, but at least it will charge.
I'm not sure what to think of the fire risk comment. My first thought was don't buy cheap crap. Before USB (A, B, or C) there would be any of hundreds of connectors you'd need to charge your phone. Assuming you didn't get a cheap charger and cable then the worst that would happen is it doesn't work. As I stated before there's a good chance you'll get your device to charge, if slowly.
But support for all the alternate modesâ"power delivery, Thunderbolt, HDMI, DisplayPort, DisplayLink, MHL, analog audio, USB 3â"depends on whether the manufacturer decided to support them, and how well they did. There's nothing about the jack to tell you whether any of those modes should be expected to work. It's plug-and-pray.
I don't like that either. The USB people really screwed up with supporting so many different video protocols. They should have stayed with one or two, or none at all.
And given that half the point of USB-C is a smaller connector that takes up less space, so portable devices can be more portable... the need for a dongle to connect just about any device makes USB-Câ"only laptops counterproductive.
I disagree on this point. I like small laptops. I also like having Ethernet and serial ports. Those two things don't go together well. What I can do though is put dongles on the cords and put the cords in my bag with the laptop. The dongles aren't even really dongles at that point, they just become part of the cable. If all you need to use are some USB-A devices then get a three pack of USB-A to USB-C adapters for $10 and put them on the devices. Such cheap adapters are USB 2.0 but if you need USB 3 speeds then you might want to invest in a proper cable, or even a new device, at that point.
With four USB-C/Thunderbolt ports I'd have a port for charging, a port for my serial cable, one for my Ethernet, and one for my mouse. If for some reason I need to go beyond that then I'd be in a situation much like any laptop made in the last 5 years or so and have to get a hub or dock.
And matters get worse when your device only has one USB-C port; any dongle you attach has to be compatible with the right charging standards too, which is nowhere near a given.
I've gotten tired of carrying 6 pound laptops around. I'll take the 2 pound laptop and then be able to choose which adapters I might need. Also, again, not any different than life before USB with the many different chargers, voltages, and amp ratings. At least I'm not tied to some vendor specific charger port that only the manufacturer provides.
At least when a device uses Micro-USB for charging, you can use any standard 2.1A USB charger with it. A few companies have power strips with built-in four-port USB-A chargers that work great for this. With USB-C, you're probably going to be stuck trying to make sure you remember which generic-looking charger came with a given device, since it's the only one you know will work right.
Micro-USB maxed out at 12 watts. I've seen some rated for 15 watts but those violated the USB specification. Smart phones got smarter and with it came greater power requirements. Micro-USB was about to die anyway bec
There are Thunderbolt 3 Cables that do in fact fall back to USB3 when used with a USB only device. It has to as it's part of the specification to support both USB 3, USB 2, power delivery, and DisplayPort. Those that do not fall back to USB 3 are violating the Thunderbolt specifications. Don't buy cables that don't meet specifications.
I searched for "thunderbolt 3 cable" on Google and here's some of the results. Check the specifications yourself.
These meet the specification.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTec...
https://www.apple.com/shop/pro...
These don't.
http://www.caldigit.com/Thunde...
It sucks that we have to watch out for not compliant cables but that was a problem for a very long time. Don't buy cheap shit.
Nope, the profit is unnecessary.
Sure it is. How else do you motivate people to invest? Tell them they would have the same amount of money they started with? Oh, but they get to help people, that might motivate them. If you tell them they'll lose money, but help people, that might work too. What would work even better is to tell people they will make money AND help others.
Even corporations that are legally non-profits can make a lot of people a lot of money. The NFL was a non-profit until the public outcry over what they thought was an abuse of the system forced them to change.
You can argue on this all you like. The best you will get from me is an agreement to disagree. If there is no profit then investors will leave for profitable ventures or because they just plain run out of money.
Are you going to claim that trickle-down economics works?
Of course it does. These people will buy products and services, and people will work to produce those products and services. The people that know how to produce value will gain wealth, and when they die they will hand it down to their kids. How does trickle down economics NOT work?
I'll tell you how excessive taxes don't work. It takes money from people that know how to make money and gives it to people that don't know how to make money. These people will have an incentive to not produce value because the government pays them regardless if they produce. The people that know how to produce now have an incentive to not produce because the government now takes every extra bit they earn. If they cannot keep what they earn they they will have the same whether they work or not. So, they will make the natural choice to not work. It's not that all work stops, people still need to eat, but instead of making money they are just paying the bills.
Taxes should be for the funding of the government, and nothing more. There is a theory of maximum return on taxes that I cannot recall the name of right now. If taxes are 0% the government gets nothing, because zero times anything is nothing. If taxes are 100% the people won't work because they also know that zero times anything is nothing. If the government wants to maximize tax revenue then taxes need to be low. People used to think that high taxes maximized tax revenue until Reagan came along and lowered taxes. Now people had money to spare on things like cars, houses, and fancy clothes, and everyone had more money to spend. Yes, the wealthy got wealthier, but so did everyone else. With more people making more money even a low tax rate means more revenue for the government. Many politicians know this. They almost have to. They must not care, being so fucked in the head that they'd rather buy votes for their next election than see a stable economy for the next generation.
Problem not in hardware. Problem in meatware.
How is that not equivalent to "you are holding it wrong"?
That's not kosher.
If you are going to make a "cops are pigs" joke then maybe a comment on "when pigs fly" is better.
I can just think of this hoverbike running out of charge while on the move over a crowded area. It's coming down, maybe with the blades still spinning, and it will make a mess. With enough charge for only 25 minutes it will be too easy to run out on even a short run out to a location and then it will have to find a place to land safely. If the area is too crowded for police on motorcycles, cars, or horses to get to then it's too crowded to land this thing. If they want police to be able to fly overhead and drop in to serve in emergencies then perhaps a cargo helicopter with rappel lines.
Unlike this hover bike a helicopter has a much better chance of being able to actually recover the officer and/or anyone in need of evacuation. Put a recovery pulley like on Coast Guard search and rescue helicopters to bring people up. No new technology needed, only a sane evaluation of the problem being solved.
Lots of hardware problems are fixed in software. Perhaps "fixed" is not the right word, perhaps "addressed" or "mitigated".
My brother mentioned his new truck didn't squeal the tires like his old truck, despite having a more powerful engine. He found out that the engine control unit would not allow a rapid increase in engine power, overriding the throttle input. This was done because the manufacturer found out that if there was slack in the linkages and the power was increased to quickly the parts of the drive train slamming together would cause premature wear. Rather than redesign the drive train to handle the larger engine torque with heavier components the engine control was changed to prevent this wear. This gave the impression of a less powerful engine since the truck would not squeal its tires as readily or push passengers into their seats like older models. It also made their trucks last longer, reduced warranty claims, and made the makers more money in making the trucks more valuable to those that lacked a lead foot.
That's one example of a software fix for a hardware problem. Perhaps not ideal but if software can make a hardware problem seem to disappear then I have to ask, was the problem really in the hardware? Maybe the problem was in the software from the start. In my example of the truck throttle control I could just as easily say that the software did not account properly for the limits of the hardware, that the software was needlessly stressing the drive train. As a wise man once said, it depends on your point of view.
That's what a lot of people do not understand. A company cannot provide food, shelter, medicine, or whatever unless they make a profit. If there is no profit in it then they cannot pay their wages, pay back investors, and have money left over for when times are thin or to invest in expansion.
Profit is good. Greed is a natural instinct. People understand greed. It is with greed that businesses stay in business to feed another natural instinct, charity. When people have enough to see to their own needs they tend to see to the needs of others. Those that don't see charity as a virtue can be tolerated, and may in fact be necessary for human survival. People with unrestrained charity are also seen as not right in the head. Giving their food up to the point they starve themselves is not healthy, for themselves or society.
I keep seeing people claim we should increase taxed the wealthy because "they can afford it". What is that other than greed? These people see others with more so they send the government to take it from them. That's just theft by proxy.
I remember a history teacher in high school making fun of "trickle down economics". He said that the taxes on the wealthy was reduced on the theory that the wealthy would use that tax money to invest in more business but they instead bought expensive cars, went on vacations, and generally lived it up. I bought it, trickle down economics was bad. Then, years later, something made me think of this some more. These wealthy people put a lot of people to work building those cars they bought, making their lavish parties, carrying their clubs at golf courses, and so on. They still invested in the economy. Even if they stuffed all that money under a mattress it still helped the economy since that was a store of wealth that could be added back when they couldn't afford those big parties and golf trips. They'd still have to buy food. Even if it stayed there until they died that money ended up in the hands of their children where they'd spend it on food, housing, clothes, and of course luxuries like caviar, lobster, plane tickets, and tips to the golf caddies.
We cannot grow total wealth without getting wealth disparity. Taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the poor rewards poverty. That's not the signal we should be sending as a society. Punishing the wealthy only because they are wealthy is paving made of good intentions that leads us down a road to where we don't want to go.
Whenever I see someone use the term "merkin" I think of Dr. Strangelove and the character President Muffley.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
We got our own President Merkin Muffley in office now. Think about why that is. As screwed up the Republican Party is for getting Trump to be POTUS the Democratic Party is even more screwed up for putting the only person that could lose to him on the ballot.
Blame those pouring trillions into military & commercial instead of real human problems and not tech geniuses.
Right! We should forget investing in military and commercial products and invest money in solving problems like getting food, clothing, shelter, and communications! What has military investment brought us? I mean other than GPS? We need ways to get food from people who grow it to those who need it. I mean that government funded GPS and highway system are nice but we need people to talk to each other. That military project that brought us the Internet is great but what about satellites? I mean we got to space on the back of military funding into rockets but what did we get from that? I mean other than cheap commercial air transport. I mean the military funding got us to space, an interstate highway system, commercial airlines, but what about... SHIPS! The military didn't do any funding on shipping did they? I mean other than after World War II handing over the factories and machines to build warships to commercial ship builders. And giving factories for tanks and warplanes so they could make passenger cars, farm tractors, air transport planes, and those ships I mentioned. Other than all of that what has military spending brought us? Other than highways, the Internet, airplanes, GPS, ships, satellite communications, what has military spending got us? Did military spending get us cheap computers that we use everyday? FUCK!
Enough snark. Just about everything we enjoy in modern society comes from developments in military spending. Commercial spending does the same. They develop products for the wealthy because they have the money to spend on these things. As they figure out how to make them cheaper and better they trickle down to those with less money. This spending by governments and commerce is how we have what we have.Taking that away helps no one.
If there aren't enough electric used cars in 2025, people will buy used gasoline and diesel cars. No real problem.
If there's no import of ICE cars allowed then prices of used cars will rise. This will deny the less wealthy access to cars, people will drive cars in poor repair longer, with the lowered standard of living that comes with it as people deal with lowered mobility, higher pollution, and lowered safety of vehicles. If ICE cars are allowed to be imported you'd still see some rises in the cost of used vehicles, and everything that follows from it, but not near as much. But then if used ICE cars are allowed to be imported then they've done next to nothing to reducing the number of ICE cars on the road.
Given the EU, I can't see market conditions in the Netherlands dominating the price for a commodity.
The Netherlands is not unique in wanting to reduce the number of ICE vehicles on the road. The market for used ICE cars will be shared among other EU nations that have similar bans.
The only way to make a ban on ICE cars work is to reduce the cost of electric cars where everyone, not just the wealthy, can afford them. Once that happens then people will just gravitate to electric cars because they are cheaper and the ban is largely unnecessary.
If the government bans something, and people are not offered something they see as a viable alternative, then people will find ways around the ban.
Since people in the Netherlands have the ability to vote out these idiots I don't expect this to get very far. Once people start to see the prices of cars go up this ban will disappear or get scaled back.
Just to give you an idea, 2kW of power on your standard 12V car requires a current of 167A.
I think I just found where a lot of the power is consumed. 167 amps is a lot of current, that means I^2*R losses.
The total power of the individual pieces and parts might be far less than 2kW, but add in losses to heat in the wires because everything is running on 12-14 volts and that might just add up to quite a bit of power loss.
Then again I might be completely wrong.
I know this is not a direct citation but an article about a report but it's the best I could find so far.
http://jacksonville.com/opinio...
Brookings whittled down a lot of analysis into three simple rules. You can avoid poverty by:
1. Graduating from high school.
2. Waiting to get married until after 21 and do not have children till after being married.
3. Having a full-time job.
If you do all those three things, your chance of falling into poverty is just 2 percent. Meanwhile, you'll have a 74 percent chance of being in the middle class.
Applies to everyone
These rules apply to all races and ethnic groups. Breaking these rules is becoming more commonplace, unfortunately, for all racial groups.
By contrast, young adults who violated all three norms -- dropped out, got married before 21 and had children out of wedlock and didn't have a full-time job -- had a 76 percent chance of winding up in poverty and a 7 percent chance of winding up in the middle class.
Did you ever think why monogamy was not the norm in pre-industrial societies? Perhaps it was this lack of family structure that kept them from advancing. And saying people "do fine" without a single partner is either a snapshot of their life before the downward spiral, or the 10% or so that were smart enough and/or had enough of another family structure to prevent their fall. Society is not so fragile that a few people with bad behaviors can bring it down. If there is a widespread loss of the family structure then society can spiral into crime and poverty for everyone.
This need for a monogamous relationship is not "obsolete" or "old fashioned", it's the societal structure we've evolved into. Given enough time we might see humanity and society evolve into something else but that's not going to happen in a couple generations. Families relying on daycare and babysitters is likely quite dangerous to society. Children need guidance, not just a someone to warehouse them during the day while the parents go off to work. The best guidance, with rare exceptions, comes from the parents. And children need male and female guidance. They need to learn from both. Children with a single biological parent in the house have very high tendencies for crime, especially men. Women with a single biological parent raising them tend to have children before getting married, therefore raising children with a criminal tendency.
This is not racial, but we do see certain races falling into poverty more than others. Lots of people came up with lots of reasons to describe the cause of this. In general though it is cultural. There is a culture in some communities that do not see a problem with children before marriage, do not see the value in an education, and lack a work ethic. Break this cycle of poverty by social pressure, not government policy (though government policy does reflect societal norms), and once the cycle is broken there is a built in mechanism to prevent it from coming back.
You assume that by 2029 electric cars will dominate the market so that people won't revolt over the inability to purchase new internal combustion cars. If electric cars can't compete in the market then there will be people keeping their gas burners longer, raising their prices. This will make all car prices soar, old and new.
Electric cars just cost more than gas burners. I don't see even 15 years of development fixing this. We are hitting some very real physical limits on battery technology, we can't make them much cheaper, lighter, or more energy dense. For there to be enough used electric cars in 2039 to compete with gasoline cars then they have to be selling in quantity now. Maybe we could see this ramp up in electric vehicles happen in the next ten years, but I doubt it.
They have elections in the Netherlands and if people are unhappy with this policy it will go away. I just saw something about how wind and solar subsidies are likely to end in Australia because people got tired of paying more for electricity and seeing blackouts come more often. Maybe the people making the windmills will be able to dominate the market, it just won't be because the government mandated it.
So, when you say the best things happen when .gov gets out of the way, perhaps you should say, the best things happen when .gov works in partnership with innovators.
The government should seek the best value for its money like any responsible buyer should. Before SpaceX there just wasn't much for competition. I am pleased that SpaceX was successful in getting a government contract. I am also pleased that the government now has leverage on the older companies to offer better value for their money. I mean *MY* money and *YOUR* money, because the government doesn't own that money, the taxpayers' do.
I hear complaints about "cost plus" contracts that the government offers contractors. Well, how else can this be done? This is much like an art patron commissioning an art piece, the artist will want to make sure that there is a profit in it since this is something that must be unique. The development of this piece cannot be mass produced later and sold in volume to make up for the time and effort it took to create. How can this be solved? I'm not sure it can. That is unless the government is willing to see F-22 fighter jets made in mass quantities and sold to any nation willing to pay the asking price.
The Space Shuttle program was a victim of this, it was built to adhere to military requirements and therefore could not be sold. Maybe nothing of military value was in the Shuttles themselves but it's unlikely any government other than the USA would have a need for it.
Furthermore there is NOTHING wrong with some tax incentives to help develop a new clean technology.
Sure, I can agree with that. The problem is when the "bootstrap" money becomes the only thing holding up the industry. Electric cars seem to be doing well right now so taking away that subsidy is not likely to hurt, it may actually help since it forces them to run leaner and meaner to stay in business. The wind and solar power industries seem to rely just a little too much on these funds that were supposed to be for development. Whenever someone in government even suggests that maybe, perhaps, at some point in the future, that the subsidies should end I see my mailbox fill up with fliers telling me to call my congresscritters to keep the subsidies. That just makes me want to call them to urge them to stop the subsidies. These subsidies have been in place for decades now, it's time to make them go away.
The internal combustion engine has had a good run but that run needs to come to a close. They are dirty, noisy, inefficient and limited to oil based fuels.
But what about the algae based diesel that the "greenies" keep talking about? Or the ethanol that we can get from corn, sugar beets, cellulose, or whatever? People were running their cars on ethanol before Prohibition, but the ban on alcohol killed that. I could argue that Prohibition set back bio-fuel research by 50 years. There's a group in the US Navy researching synthesized hydrocarbons, no oil from the ground needed. This Navy process uses nuclear power and seawater to create jet fuel, fuel that's been successfully tested on internal combustion engines. Fuel that is carbon neutral, contains no sulfur, and generally burns very cleanly.
Using fuel that doesn't come out of the ground means being clean. Efficiency is a matter of perspective, 30% efficiency might not be great to some people but if you are constrained by volume and mass like in a vehicle then it doesn't look so bad. Noisy? I'll give you that.
Wasn't there a story about that creep Zuckerberg wanting to become President of the United States of Facebook?
The Circle by Dave Eggers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...