aeternus

After watching some videos of what Uber drivers have to put up with, as well as having a few friends that work in retail, some kind of "social metric" may not be the worst thing.

As a society, we put up with a lot of terrible behavior and people get away with it because they don't care about making a scene or situation that is uncomfortable for everyone else. We pay higher prices to deal with these people's behavior: constantly complaining until they get free stuff, abusing return policies, review blackmail, vandalizing state/national parks, cutting lines, etc.

You're right though that we need very strong guarantees around the sources and accuracy of such a metric.

>there's no reason to expect SpaceX to be a good citizen of the night sky.

Seems like they are willing to do more than most:

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1132908915144794113

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1132908689860415488

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1132902372458418176

They all have Xenon thrusters and can move, however will do so only when needed to dodge other satellites or debris. Changing their orbit significantly is prohibitively expensive.

You can see the general pattern in a really cool webgl animation on the main site: https://www.starlink.com/

The video in the article is not representative. Solar sails were not in the final position and the satellites were not in their final (higher) orbit. It was also taken during the short time-window that the sun was still illuminating the satellites.

Regardless, we should be moving our telescopes to space. Much less interference of all kinds.

How about robot children: - No oxygen required - No food required - Can be made quite small - 50% lower chance of uprising when compared to humans

Are those actually more environment-friendly than nuclear?

Seems like those would take up lots of land area and easily fry and possibly blind animals, especially birds that get too close.

They do look cool though.

Farming is also mostly an energy problem. Assuming cheap energy, you can create hydroponics that scale vertically. Highrise farms, and they could consume electricity during off-peak times when it is extremely low cost.

Water is also not a problem, we are surprisingly good at treating water, can even turn saltwater into freshwater given sufficient energy.

Only if the spacecraft never accelerates.

Yes, I'm not sure why so many people attempt to shame people into using less energy. That strategy has a long history of not working.

The answer has to be to apply technology. Cleaner energy generation and new (or old) methods to sequester CO2.

A state-of-the-art deep learning neural net designed by digital video experts within one of the most technology savvy companies in the world...

What do they use to reveal it to the world? GIFs!

I'm not sure that images should be your largest concern.

Messaging apps and the sites you visit online are much richer sources of data for adtech and ML.

Suppose someone checks some malicious code into the repo. Without signed commits it can be very difficult to determine or prove who was responsible. That ability to audit is important to most companies, and should be important to most popular open source projects as well.

I'm also not convinced. I frequently see Gmail suggestions that I would not consider positive, for instance: I'm not interested. What is this about? Who are you?

In this case click through rate does seem to be the right measure. The feature is most useful when it is suggesting the most likely replies.

Seems like an unpopular opinion, but I also think procrastination is actually beneficial in this sense.

It can sometimes eliminate or reduce recurrent tasks, IE procrastinate getting a haircut: fewer haircuts / year. Procrastinate cleaning or laundry: less total time spent since you can do more at once.

There's always a small chance the task will entirely disappear (business priorities shift). In those cases, procrastination can actually be helpful.

This is why companies should really be requiring GPG-signed commits.

Competition should be a good thing. The real issue is that colleges and employers are looking at the wrong signals. This leads the existing competition.

GPA for example is arbitrary yet colleges and employers are basically asking schools to 'optimize' / maximize it. Standardized testing (ACT/SAT) is much better, but still misses important aspects like leadership ability. Even the prestige of the school is a poor signal.

Give employers / colleges a better objective measure and they will gladly use it. Perhaps we should have a post-college standardized test.

There must be a better format than conference talks. They are a significant commitment for both the presenter and the audience. Both must make the choice to attend before knowing details of the content, and it reaches a relatively small audience.

I'd much rather see a format where talks can be viewed or subscribed to individually, rated, and open to feedback/discussion.

That may not be entirely desirable.

In the US that ability to move where the jobs are is creating a concentration of prosperity in certain cities. Often those with above average skills are able to move, leaving the others behind.

This leads to overcrowding in cities like NY and SF. Layer in economies of scale, increased competition, and better talent pools, and it becomes increasingly difficult for other areas to compete. Creates a kind of feedback loop which increases the geographical wealth disparity.

The only thing that seems to balance that is the increase in cost-of-living in those areas.

Probably because a large percentage of those billionaires have their wealth in the form of company equity which is untaxed or taxed at the low capital gains rate.

Single digit drop out for PhD programs does not sound right, I've believe the stat is closer to 50%:

https://www.chronicle.com/article/PhD-Attrition-How-Much-Is/...

Do you feel your buying power is less than that of your parents? Other than real-estate in a popular city, has your buying power really gone down?

Also would you rather live in a society where:

A) GDP (or general productivity and availability of goods) increases by 3%. However this society has wealth inequality

B) GDP stays approximately flat or increases by only 0.1% / year but the society has perfect wealth equality.

Relativity Space is also working on this, but with rockets:

https://www.relativityspace.com/

I'd wager a simpler explanation: People in SF especially are increasingly purchasing every-day items online.

This means retail shops need to capitalize on discovery and unique items. Especially items that are unique enough that people can't just snap a pic and order/price-compare it online.

This study has a 95% uncertainty interval, and their conclusion is that alcohol consumption increases your risk from: 918 per 100,000 people from 914 per 100,000.

..I'd argue their conclusion is meaningless given the uncertainty interval.

Closing streets can actually improve traffic. It many cities, you could close many side-streets to all but local traffic (residents). This would make the city much more bike & scooter friendly.

Electric bikes and scooters really change the game, you no longer have to be in great shape or sweaty in order to avoid taking a car to your destination. Really, safety is the main concern many people have.

We should really be looking at the stats, is this system safer than a human driver?

Given the number of reported fatalities reported recently, it may not be.

Rot may actually be useful by allowing out-dated, inaccurate, or useless information to be removed or fall into obscurity.

Correct, useful, or noteworthy information is often re-posted and copied, leading to preservation.

There's a strong argument to be made that a truly benevolent dictator is by far the best form of government. Efficient decisions that are in the best interest of the overall population.

China may have come close to that over the last decade. The question is whether it can maintain that, or whether the power of the authoritarian regime will eventually lead to corruption and decisions that are counter to the overall interest of the people.

Safe, cheap, and fast. Pick any two.