clicks

> So I wouldn't count on robots replacing humans in actual customer service - on the contrary, I expect companies that do not provide proper human interface start losing customers to those who do.

Right, but that's for the /edge/ cases. Like when you're going through automated calls and the robot voice has you go through a process of giving information in various ways -- either by saying something out loud and it'll try to determine what you said, or you just simply type it through the keypad... and then when you fail to communicate properly you get transferred to a real human being.

I can tell you that a very high amount of my friends/family relatives (middle-class folks) cite the reason of their not going to restaurants to be the cost of eating out. Automation will help reduce that cost, so I don't think you have a very strong argument here that people will just stop going to restaurants. And, there is more to a restaurant service than just the 'server experience' -- there is the decor, the fine view, the washed dishes, the nice walk around the town it takes to get there and so on.

As for pubs and bars, yes they are the places that people go to socialize, but not all of that socialization is with the bartender or the server, it's with other people too who're there to also socialize. Bars and pubs will get help from automation, just lessly so than restaurants.

    The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the
    more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership 
    and planning coterie. This must result in minimization 
    of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an 
    increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent 
    system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased 
    ability to hold onto power as the environment demands
    adaption.

Hold on there -- it's already being automated in Japan (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Z1EaFFICI ), Germany (http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/27/fully-automated-restauran... ), etc. Here in America there'll be some resistance but I'm pretty sure we'll go through automation in restaurants/bars as well. The driving force is economic benefit, sooner or later when these robots keep get less expensive, it'll start to make more economic sense for restaurant owners to have a robot server instead of a human server (no wage to pay, no health insurance to pay, no pension to pay, no risk of accidents or inconsistencies, no fear of getting things stolen, no fear of tension between BOH and FOH (common problems in a restaurant)). Savings will likely be passed on to customers, they won't have to tip, and so ultimately a large subset of consumers will eventually accept it. Except of course, a very small minority that is interested specifically in the human interaction... so, much like the lady in the article, the server job will not completely disappear, but it will be heavily minimized. And like there are tools with which customers can buy tickets by automation, customers will be able to order on things like E la carte ( http://elacarte.com/ YC-funded by the way). A server's job is cut in half with E la carte. Restaurant owners will realize that servers are doing half the work, so you need half of them now anyway (or alternatively, they now need half the pay... which will make the server job half as attractive).

has several good tips on how to cheat polygraph tests. I actually strongly encourage everyone to read up on polygraph tests and how to cheat them, here's why: they've been wrong again and again, they've gotten innocent men in trouble. There's a very real probability that the polygraph can say you're lying even when you're not lying. To save yourself from getting caught by these pseduo-scientific tests if ever you're in the position, prepare yourself now, learn about the polygraph tests and how you can use them to your benefit.

Look at his post from a little more than two years ago: http://i.imgur.com/qL01m.png

There are no insults in that post, instead you see a man who's created something wonderful and isn't getting anything back for it. Of course the icing on this cake is that, that very post was marked as dead... his cry for help was not seen or heard by anyone.

I had not been aware of this 'sharing movement', and how this perspective was being force-fed by some SV folks. And now that I've found about it I find this to be very off-putting, I was expecting better from SV.

The BI article on TaskRabbit (http://www.businessinsider.com/confessions-of-a-task-rabbit-...) I think nicely outlines the problems with this wave of 'sharing' startups:

    The whole thing about TaskRabbit, again it's "neighbors 
    helping neighbors," as if my health and safety don't 
    matter, as if I'm willing to put up with whatever you 
    dish out no matter what.  And it's required that 
    TaskRabbits always have a smile on their faces.  You 
    know what, I'm not going to smile at you while you lie. 
    It's a health factor, it's a safety risk.  I don't want 
    to get covered in cat shit and if I do, I should know 
    about it and get paid for it. 

    There really is an element of disregard for the 
    Rabbits. Then the email I got from TaskRabbit about 
    being unprofessional — my answer to that is, if you 
    actively suppress what you actually foster, it is 
    abuse. Then people will figure out that they can lie 
    and manipulate the TaskRabbits to get what they want. 

    BI: Do TaskRabbits ever meet?

    Not so much.  I've met a couple of them because either 
    I've posted tasks myself or I was assigned a task that 
    involved another TaskRabbit.  That's part of the 
    strategy of TaskRabbit — to keep us apart from one 
    another.  We can't message each other on the website. 
    The only way you get to meet another TaskRabbit is if 
    you post a task, and I think they do this to keep us 
    apart because they don't want us fixing the process. 
    They don't want us unionizing.  They don't want us to 
    get together and say an Ikea run is $50 minimum. 

    If it's a $25 job, how much will TaskRabbit take?

    Here's how it works.  I wish I had access to their back 
    end numbers.  Certainly a task that costs, let's say, 
    $30 or more, the markup is actually about 70%.  At a 
    lower price point the markup is smaller and it could be 
    as low as 15%.  For example, if I bid $20 on a grocery 
    run, the poster will probably pay a price of $23.  So 
    that is fair.

    But as the price goes up, so does the cut.  And I know 
    once you hit about $30 for the task, the markup is 70%.

Someone who's working at Walmart does not make a lot of money, they most likely cannot afford to give their children the best education, they cannot afford a reliable car, they're more at risk of failing to make the rent payment due to some unforeseen accident.

Someone who's in the financial position to be able to comfortably invest their money, or is otherwise a millionaire, even if they lose a good few hundred thousand dollars, it will not affect them much. At least, not as much to pose the question of if they'll be sleeping on their own comfy bed or in a homeless shelter.

When you say that people "deserve" minimum wage because that's all of the value they're providing to society, this is what you're talking about. You're talking about putting them in a very shakey position, you're talking about making them borderline-homeless.

Incidentally, please do take the 17 minutes to watch this speech (and perhaps follow along with yread's transcript link). It really is one of the greatest speeches ever given.

If you're born a millionaire like Paris Hilton, and you capriciously decide to become a large shareholder of Walmart's stocks one day, you... well, you just sit back and watch the money roll in without doing anything. Even though you're providing zero value to society you make a very large amount of money. In this way, not only is clarky07's profoundly and bizarrely misinformed, it is also selfish and offensive.

I graduated from an inner city school in the midwest, no-one in my class was admitted to a top tier school (or even a second tier school, now that I think about it). But there were actually quite a few many who actually applied to Harvard or Princeton and such. I wasn't able to appreciate until recently that activities like band afterschool, cross country, and 4's on AP tests aren't good enough to land a spot in any big-name university. Presumably the number of dead-in-the-bucket applicants like this have gone up, so I'm less inclined to interpret the drop of acceptance rate as some indication that it's suddenly much more difficult for rich kids to get accepted than it used to be a decade ago.

[1]: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/sat-scores-and-...

And speaking of privacy in anonymous forums and NSA snooping, I've been thinking as of late:

We can reasonably conclude now that NSA is probably in the game of data mining in a manner much like Google or Facebook, graphing networks and all. Data mining is considerably easier to do on social networking sites like Facebook where there's a push from the beginning to tie accounts to real identities, unlike anonymous forums. Now, the thing is, Reddit/4chan is a breeding ground for contrarian thought, indeed it is where a lot of the interesting stuff is born in the eyes of three-lettered agencies -- half of the Lulzsec memebers were active Redditors, Edward Snowden was a Redditor, every other programmer with unorthodox political interests is on Reddit. So I am really very confident that NSA/FBI keeps a special tab on Reddit, but what I'm curious about is how they go about doing that. I don't think Reddit staff has made a deal with three-letter agencies to help them tie anonymous accounts to real identities... but I wouldn't be surprised if these three letter agencies are putting a concerted effort on gathering data from anonymous networks in hopes of linking all things said and done under the guise of anonymity back to some real world id. (I imagine are probably sitting on a good many zero days, and can presumably carry out operations in which they surreptitiously steal a lot of data that can help them to tie Reddit accounts to real id's, for example).

But really, I think the author by himself meant all of it to be serious, just that he tried to be humorous along the way.

edit: Just to be clear I'm not attacking Tesla/Musk, I love them both. I'm peeved by everyone pretending or thinking EVs are solutions without any shortcomings whatsoever, and I'm peeved that we sometimes ignore/attack people who are in good faith just pointing out potential problems.

The age argument is not good enough. You're still trivializing his willingness to release private information about thousands of students at his university without their permission.

What irks me about the quote is how specific and self-assured he sounds:

    Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
    Zuck: Just ask.
    Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
    [Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
    Zuck: People just submitted it.
    Zuck: I don't know why.
    Zuck: They "trust me"
    Zuck: Dumb fucks.

I am also saddened that pg time and again praises him for being an example of a good founder. The hacker community should continue giving him as much hell as possible (as most of it does, thankfully), refuse to promote its business (don't put 'Like' buttons on your stuff), don't use Facebook Connect, don't have a FB profile, do not disclose bugs to FB, etc. Don't reward individuals who lack basic conscience.

The thing I've found to be true in my case is that I do have bad memory in general -- but this is because of the unique childhood I had: I was never forced to memorize anything. I've a habit of referencing my smartphone when I need to know what someone's phonenumber is, I've a habit of looking at address books and maps to know where someone is, instead of making a concerted effort to think where they live beforehand. My brother-in-law is the opposite of me: he purposely avoids using his smartphone/GPS, and instead looks at Google Maps directions before taking off for the trip... and relies on it with memory. I asked him why he did that instead of just using the GPS that he does have and he straight up told me he does these things for memory exercises. So now, at least for the past few months, I've also been making a concerted effort in improving my memory and I've found that I can do these incredible things... I can memorize pi to 100 digit, I can memorize pages of books that are in a language I barely understand -- despite my shrink telling me that I have terrible memory.

So I don't think 300bps's comment was offensive at all. Memory is very much a skill that can be improved with dedicated effort. I'm someone who long believed until recently that I had bad memory and I had to deal with it... but this is not true, I can do mental exercises to improve it. Research has proved time and again that learning new languages, new musical instruments, etc. are great exercises to keep the mind/memory sharp. I implore you to look into the idea: use little tricks, read the book "Moonwalking with Einstein" (it's about memorizing things in fun ways), take about a week to memorize digits of pi (spend about 10 hours, I'd say -- use various techniques (which you can read up on online)), and get back to us. See if you truly can or can't memorize pi to the 50th (or even 100th) digit if you really put the effort to it. The more you do it, the more your ability will improve. If it takes you 5 hours the first time around to remember some 50 digits, it'll take you just one hour the next 50th time you do it.

All, full episodes are there.

Of course that's a possibility -- servers have bad days, sure, but these isolated incidents don't negate the need to solve the bigger problems of wage disparity in restaurants (cooks being paid half what servers earn -- close to minimum wage in some instances, no matter that they went through culinary school and incurred huge debt), the problems of racism and sexism, etc. I feel non-tipping is the easy and obvious solution here.

I think that is a bit of a stretch. There is concrete evidence that explains this happens a lot, and it's clear that racism [1] and sexism [2] are a key part of it.

And -- not as scientific here -- but there's intuition I have gathered that's backed up with 10 years of extensive dining out in various arrangements and settings, and anecdotes from my server friends about the politics in restaurants.

[1] http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/Business_Considerations_T...

[2] http://tippingresearch.com/uploads/ServerAppearance1-3-08.pd...

Also, as a brown male, reading the article made it pretty clear why I receive markedly poorer service when I'm with my family (also brown), vs. when I'm eating out with my white friends. Being reminded of racism in this way is, well... pretty stressful.

This essay was also posted on Reddit, and I saw similar responses from African American folks there: even though a lot of them tip pretty generously, they can sense that servers don't look forward to being at their table providing service, as if they're anticipating a bad tip.