TheAdamAndChe

100%. Companies don't hire based on capability, they hire based on reputation and the labor supply/demand of the area. If you can do neat stuff but have never proven your capacity to do so, then it's unlikely you'd be hired.

Information Technology is technology that involves information manipulation and storage. Development and software engineering are subsets of IT, infrastructure maintenance is another.

Is it cheaper in other countries? It makes sense when considering they're paying for housing, food, infrastructure, maintenance, security, and overhead.

This doesn't make sense to me. If a driver isn't capable or willing to be ADA compliant, then why are they driving other people? They shouldn't be.

It shouldn't matter. As they say in the article, "The bottom line is that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, a guide dog should be able to go anywhere that a blind person can go."

If the driver isn't willing to comply with the regulations, then they shouldn't broadcast their services on Uber.

Sure, but you can't just close a milk bottle and expect the spilled milk to come back. Good or not, we have suburbs and rural infrastructure that won't just disappear in a decade.

> "cars are not a necessity"

This is only potentially true in dense urban environments. Its not true in suburban and rural areas, at least in the US. The rural-to-urban transition won't occur fast enough for this to not be true for a few decades at very least.

One of the best way to prepare for the future is to discuss with others what is possible, then make a probability map of those potential outcomes and act accordingly. Of course we don't know the answers, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't ask and prepare.

> The tech isn't ready to deploy

What makes you say this? All they have to do is grind up olivine and dump it in parts of the ocean with high vorticity like unused shores.

Does libreboot auto-update now? Back when I played with it, I had to manually apply updates(which I admittedly didn't do).

The future will be different, and we will have to adapt. But to see it as bleak is to embrace the pessimistic interpretation, which while sometimes accurate isn't always the best way to view things.

Humans are the most adaptable species on the planet. We can purposefully manipulate our environment for our purposes. Our adaptability will help us going forward.

How isn't their brand tarnished around the world? Besides the emissions scandal, their vehicles are just expensive and difficult to maintain.

I've got a diesel VW Jetta. It has been nothing but a money pit. I'm in the US for reference.

The two statements aren't incongruent. People who inherit money but spend it all because of bad habits don't accumulate wealth.

No. A rectangular block of a typical battery has a much lower surface area-to-mass ratio than a tube, even if their weights are the same. It's why cooling fins on a CPU are long and skinny. Such length and skinniness makes heat dissipation much easier.

In increased surface area-to-mass ratio would probably make this easier.

I recommend people read the article, it actually has some information. More info:

"The battery has an energy density of 24 Wh/kg, meaning approximately 20 percent capacity compared to comparable lithium-ion batteries currently available. But since the weight of the vehicles can be greatly reduced, less energy will be required to drive an electric car, for example"

"the researchers did not choose the materials to try and break records – rather, they wanted to investigate and understand the effects of material architecture and separator thickness." - this implies there may be a lot of room for improvement with this design.

Yes, LSD and other psychedelics can trigger psychosis. There's definitely a risk-vs-reward calculation that must be made. I'd either be dead or be a ne'er-do-well without intervention though.

They mention in the article that Amazon in Europe is largely unionized, and they don't have the mob. What makes you say we can't do the same here?

I am reading Peter Thiel's book about startups, and he discusses the nature of technological monopolies. It says how most tech monopolies have common attributes: proprietary software, network effects, economies of scale, and a solid brand. It looks to me like those companies have all of that.

Just another anecdote. A large dose of LSD reversed the course of my severe depression. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but there are lots of things that a depressed person can try, and believe me, it's worth trying.

> if all you want to do is create noise, I guess you don't need to have targeted communications.

This is key in anti-extremist operations on anonymous boards. 4chan and other similar sites are absolutely nothing like they were a decade ago, I presume because of such bots flooding them with noise.

I guess there's something I don't understand here. You're telling me that if a company spends money to invest in itself or improve its infrastructure, that isn't considered an expense? That seems like it would disincentivize investment in company growth.

If stock price and valuation isn't a reward, then why is executive compensation often tied to stock price?

> how do you know what the "fair share" is that doesn't harm the capacity of the company to continue to provide value?

I don't know, but it should pass a smell test at least. I can tell you that a company that was recently net negative only because of reinvestment using those negative years to not pay taxes during positive years doesn't pass the smell test.

There's nothing capricious about those results. $70M annual profit should be treated differently than $20M. That was $70M that the company decided not to reinvest.

If companies are the lifeblood of the country, then the government is the bones. It provides absolutely necessary infrastructure like roads, water, sewers, and law enforcement. It provides economic and social stability through fiscal controls and food subsidies. It provides an educated population through schools.

When viewed this way, the vitriol arising from a large company not paying taxes makes sense. The entire organism requires coordination in order to survive, and the government and companies need to work together and support each other in order to thrive.

This isn't even going into the outrage arising from the fact that large companies are treated very differently from small businesses and individuals.

Yes, and they've been rewarded with profits and a soaring stock price. Why shouldn't they pay taxes for that? It's undoubtable that they used federal and public infrastructure in the process of making and growing the company.

They don't have to pay taxes this year because they didn't make money in previous years? How are previous years relevant to this year? I know what they're doing is legal, but it sure is silly. Their net loss over the last few years wasn't because they couldn't have been profitable. It was part of their business strategy.

It wouldn't be as nice as an e-ink device, but the Surface is pretty nice for doodling on PDFs.

There's no confusion, just a difference in upbringing. I was raised being told that racism was discrimination due to race and sexism was discrimination due to sex. I was told that our goal should be to be blind to such attributes in a professional setting. There were many in my age group that were raised the same.

And how much more of it is preparation for the effects of global warming? I'm personally strongly considering buying land in Alaska because the land will be far more livable in just a few decades. It makes sense that people around the globe would start preparing in Canada too.