Most experts I've heard from don't claim there will be more hurricanes, only that hurricanes may do more damage because first, rising sea levels makes for more coastal flooding; and second, warm oceans evaporate more water into the storms such that they rain down harder over land.
I suspect the product support lines will be the first to use it, not because it's good, but because co's want to cut staff. It just has to kinda sorta work to make it tempting enough. It's one of the lowest barriers of entry due to low expectations since product support already sucks at a good many co's.
He's been complaining about China's (alleged) trade barriers since at least late 1980's. He claimed he tried to do business in China and encountered tons of red tape put up by the Chinese gov't.
Thus, his motivation to "fix" China may be a combination of greed and xenophobia. (Get even with "those darn foreigners".)
I see it as more of a gamble: there was a (slim) chance he really did have fantastic negotiating skills to balance trade and bring back factory jobs. Experimentation is part of science. (Although, this particular lab-rat has an Abby Normal brain.)
poor egotistical blowhards? That's what/. is for, right?
Yip! News for arrogant nerds. My framework can beat up your framework because it has distributed asynchronous web-scale separation of concerns and is entirely written in JavaScript top to bottom and can boot from a cheap thumb-drive.
But I think it's clear that capitalism does tend to flatten out inequality over time.
Sorry, it's not clear to me.
During periods of rapid technological change the social upheaval created provides great opportunities to create massive new wealth, and it ends up concentrated at first among the people best positioned to grab it.
And they become the new plutocrats, replacing the old ones. The new tech companies end up controlling standards and patents. It's kind of a network effect where you use control and patents to get even more control and patents.
Microsoft got bigger by using its OS near-monopoly to subsidize their early Office software, whacking the Office competition into nothing. Similarly, Google is using its search near-monopoly to get a sales advantage on their other products. (Europe is suing them over that.) Facebook had competitors, but the network effect left only one winner: winner take all, losers dry up.
And 100+ years ago, the railroad used its railroad monopoly to gain monopolies on OTHER resources by subsidizing shipping costs of their own brands/products until competitors died, then charged more because they had no competition any more. Pattern repeats: the rich use wealth to get richer and it snowballs.
I agree new technology disrupts the current plutocrats and monopolies, but it just ends up creating new plutocrats and monopolies. It's plutocratic musical chairs.
Other nations such as Canada, Germany, Norway, and Japan seem to have more even distribution of income than USA. And while their cars and houses are probably on average smaller than ours, they do have better safety nets.
More efficient production makes the economy better?
It's fair to say that efficiency CAN make the economy better, but the benefits of that betterment often don't get distributed well in practice. That uneven distribution is largely why Mr. Trump won. The slightly-Democrat-leaning rust-belt leaned toward Trump this time, bucking the trend, because they've been hit hardest by automation and outsourcing. The distribution problems can be both geographical and by class (since the rich are still getting richer).
I don't fully believe in Trump's claimed solutions to the rust belt, but he did focus on and popularized the issue better. If you have a back-ache, you'll probably pick the doctor who talks more about backs, even if their solutions seem nebulous.
The ATM graph doesn't appear to show what the author claims it shows. It looks like ATM's greatly delayed the growth of bank teller employment. Without ATM's, it looks like the total tellers would be roughly more than double the current quantity (although the chart doesn't cover enough years to get a good feel for the pre-ATM rate). The rate of teller growth may be finally going up again, but that's probably despite ATM's if we look at the pre-ATM rate. Using that chart, it appears ATM's indeed did take a big bite out of overall teller jobs.
Jobs and technology are mostly independent issues in the big picture. An economy is basically systematic bartering: you want stuff I have/produce, and I want stuff you have/produce. We trade to get what we want. Money, banks, etc. are simply tools to make such trades easier and scale-able.
The problem is that politics, geopolitical complexities, and herd mentality create boom and bust cycles, and inequality where the winner takes all and the losers get tossed. These boom and bust cycles are probably as natural as the spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy. Capitalism bubbles have been occurring for at least 400 years, long before the USA and the Federal Reserve existed (since many blame the FR).
And capitalism does NOT guarantee reasonable equality. For the past the 40 years or so, the rich have got much richer while the rest mostly stagnated. E-commerce hasn't reversed this trend. The economy produces much more, but it's not trickling down. There seems to be a feedback cycle where the owner of machines and real-estate get yet more machines and real-estate, creating a winner-take-all economy. (It's similar to Marx's prediction.) Automation may be part of that, but it's also because the rich can buy up land and companies during slumps. The middle class is usually trying to make ends meet during slumps and so don't have enough spare cash to play that game nearly as much.
The article is paywalled so I cannot see it, but I am skeptical of claims made by the WSJ. They are often biased.
Tech giants like Apple, Facebook and Google are no doubt going to blast the Trump administration's decision...
Why should the prez care what tech giants think? They don't vote; corporations are not people. Granted, it's good to listen to all constituents and affected parties to understand all perspectives, but elected officials should be paying most of their attention to those who elect them. We are a democracy (or should be), not a corporatocracy.
(I'm not agreeing with the prez's decision, only saying big biz shouldn't be the major reason to set policy.)
This seems pretty obvious. I (occasionally) like bingeing chocolate, but the first chocolate bite is always better than the last. Same with cheeseburgers and porn (no connection there, don't force one in snarky jokes).
Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the web was that the server would transmit the relevant info (pictures and text) to your browser, and your browser would format it in the manner which was most readable on your device [or user preference].
This conflicts with the marketer's view of the world. The marketer wants to control the message, and that includes the look of the message. If they want to attract a given "cohort" (demographic), they want to be able to shape and style the content that way to attract that demographic, and sometimes ONLY that demographic to weed out alleged riff-raff and/or not waste ad fees on unlikely buyers.
And how can you get a jump on the latest style if you cannot convey the latest style? Purple denim's the latest craze? Okay, Marketing Joe wants the page show a purple denim font. If the UI dev doesn't deliver, he/she is fired.
That's what I've been saying to the stubborn fad-sniffers. NOW I have evidence to use against them so that they can't merely dismiss me as an old fogie. (I am an old fogie, but a correct fogie!) Thank You, Dear Slashdotter!
One can't easily tell what are buttons, input boxes, etc. in the flat look. It's all a bunch of flat rectangles of different colors. If you don't know the rectangle color coding scheme of a given site, you have to guess. The 70's called, and they want the Partridge Family bus UI back.
Slashdot Mirror
Most experts I've heard from don't claim there will be more hurricanes, only that hurricanes may do more damage because first, rising sea levels makes for more coastal flooding; and second, warm oceans evaporate more water into the storms such that they rain down harder over land.
Google's having a cloudy day; or should I say, non-cloudy?
"Alexa, kill all humans."
I'll call it AI when it can fetch me a beer, take out the garbage, and suck my dick.
I suspect the product support lines will be the first to use it, not because it's good, but because co's want to cut staff. It just has to kinda sorta work to make it tempting enough. It's one of the lowest barriers of entry due to low expectations since product support already sucks at a good many co's.
"Pfffft, us big webbies ain't need no stinkin' ACID."
He's been complaining about China's (alleged) trade barriers since at least late 1980's. He claimed he tried to do business in China and encountered tons of red tape put up by the Chinese gov't.
Thus, his motivation to "fix" China may be a combination of greed and xenophobia. (Get even with "those darn foreigners".)
What?
Skipping several caveats for brevity, I'll agree to that.
He has two consistent motivations: 1) ego and 2) xenophobia. Been that way for 4 decades.
Well, Apple did co-invent the flat look.
I see it as more of a gamble: there was a (slim) chance he really did have fantastic negotiating skills to balance trade and bring back factory jobs. Experimentation is part of science. (Although, this particular lab-rat has an Abby Normal brain.)
Learning to write bullshit about robots; it's the latest thing.
Kitty-porn
Yip! News for arrogant nerds. My framework can beat up your framework because it has distributed asynchronous web-scale separation of concerns and is entirely written in JavaScript top to bottom and can boot from a cheap thumb-drive.
True, but WSJ has a certain known pattern of bias.
Sorry, it's not clear to me.
And they become the new plutocrats, replacing the old ones. The new tech companies end up controlling standards and patents. It's kind of a network effect where you use control and patents to get even more control and patents.
Microsoft got bigger by using its OS near-monopoly to subsidize their early Office software, whacking the Office competition into nothing. Similarly, Google is using its search near-monopoly to get a sales advantage on their other products. (Europe is suing them over that.) Facebook had competitors, but the network effect left only one winner: winner take all, losers dry up.
And 100+ years ago, the railroad used its railroad monopoly to gain monopolies on OTHER resources by subsidizing shipping costs of their own brands/products until competitors died, then charged more because they had no competition any more. Pattern repeats: the rich use wealth to get richer and it snowballs.
I agree new technology disrupts the current plutocrats and monopolies, but it just ends up creating new plutocrats and monopolies. It's plutocratic musical chairs.
Other nations such as Canada, Germany, Norway, and Japan seem to have more even distribution of income than USA. And while their cars and houses are probably on average smaller than ours, they do have better safety nets.
It's fair to say that efficiency CAN make the economy better, but the benefits of that betterment often don't get distributed well in practice. That uneven distribution is largely why Mr. Trump won. The slightly-Democrat-leaning rust-belt leaned toward Trump this time, bucking the trend, because they've been hit hardest by automation and outsourcing. The distribution problems can be both geographical and by class (since the rich are still getting richer).
This map shows the delta of the voting pattern per last election. The red-shifted areas fall predominantly in the rust-belt. The distribution problem has been an economic stumper of late.
I don't fully believe in Trump's claimed solutions to the rust belt, but he did focus on and popularized the issue better. If you have a back-ache, you'll probably pick the doctor who talks more about backs, even if their solutions seem nebulous.
The ATM graph doesn't appear to show what the author claims it shows. It looks like ATM's greatly delayed the growth of bank teller employment. Without ATM's, it looks like the total tellers would be roughly more than double the current quantity (although the chart doesn't cover enough years to get a good feel for the pre-ATM rate). The rate of teller growth may be finally going up again, but that's probably despite ATM's if we look at the pre-ATM rate. Using that chart, it appears ATM's indeed did take a big bite out of overall teller jobs.
Jobs and technology are mostly independent issues in the big picture. An economy is basically systematic bartering: you want stuff I have/produce, and I want stuff you have/produce. We trade to get what we want. Money, banks, etc. are simply tools to make such trades easier and scale-able.
The problem is that politics, geopolitical complexities, and herd mentality create boom and bust cycles, and inequality where the winner takes all and the losers get tossed. These boom and bust cycles are probably as natural as the spiral arms in the Milky Way galaxy. Capitalism bubbles have been occurring for at least 400 years, long before the USA and the Federal Reserve existed (since many blame the FR).
And capitalism does NOT guarantee reasonable equality. For the past the 40 years or so, the rich have got much richer while the rest mostly stagnated. E-commerce hasn't reversed this trend. The economy produces much more, but it's not trickling down. There seems to be a feedback cycle where the owner of machines and real-estate get yet more machines and real-estate, creating a winner-take-all economy. (It's similar to Marx's prediction.) Automation may be part of that, but it's also because the rich can buy up land and companies during slumps. The middle class is usually trying to make ends meet during slumps and so don't have enough spare cash to play that game nearly as much.
The article is paywalled so I cannot see it, but I am skeptical of claims made by the WSJ. They are often biased.
Why should the prez care what tech giants think? They don't vote; corporations are not people. Granted, it's good to listen to all constituents and affected parties to understand all perspectives, but elected officials should be paying most of their attention to those who elect them. We are a democracy (or should be), not a corporatocracy.
(I'm not agreeing with the prez's decision, only saying big biz shouldn't be the major reason to set policy.)
This seems pretty obvious. I (occasionally) like bingeing chocolate, but the first chocolate bite is always better than the last. Same with cheeseburgers and porn (no connection there, don't force one in snarky jokes).
This conflicts with the marketer's view of the world. The marketer wants to control the message, and that includes the look of the message. If they want to attract a given "cohort" (demographic), they want to be able to shape and style the content that way to attract that demographic, and sometimes ONLY that demographic to weed out alleged riff-raff and/or not waste ad fees on unlikely buyers.
And how can you get a jump on the latest style if you cannot convey the latest style? Purple denim's the latest craze? Okay, Marketing Joe wants the page show a purple denim font. If the UI dev doesn't deliver, he/she is fired.
Vulcan vs. Ferengi culture conflict.
That's what I've been saying to the stubborn fad-sniffers. NOW I have evidence to use against them so that they can't merely dismiss me as an old fogie. (I am an old fogie, but a correct fogie!) Thank You, Dear Slashdotter!
One can't easily tell what are buttons, input boxes, etc. in the flat look. It's all a bunch of flat rectangles of different colors. If you don't know the rectangle color coding scheme of a given site, you have to guess. The 70's called, and they want the Partridge Family bus UI back.