Expert tools are for experts, they can be hard to use as long as they are really good at doing what they do. If you haven't noticed though, these modern times are all about convenience. We even have delivery services for gasoline, and there was already a gas station on every corner. If Docker (or someone else) makes this stuff super easy, they are going to win.
Now you can take a really simple Docker compose file and make it complicated with Kubernetes, happy day! Seriously, the complexity and learning curve of Kubernetes will eventually kill the project.
There are volumes written on this subject, though Taleb's "Dynamic Hedging" is as good an introduction as any. The short explanation is that, in theory, the payoff of any vanilla option can be replicated by trading the underlying asset. For a while, quite a long while even, this kind of trading can look profitable. There are many variations on this, such as trade frequency and holding interval, but in the very end you realize you are being compensated for an asymmetric risk. That is the risk of sudden changes of price while you happen to have a position open, among many other risks. I would say that 99% of the "newly discovered" profitable systems I have seen over the last 20 years were unwittingly replicating a short vanilla or exotic option without understanding the risk.
What's really illuminating about this article is that it reveals the myopic thinking of a statist. The only solutions proposed are a) increase taxes or b) change spending or c) reduce liabilities. Where is option d) reduce the cost of roads?
Everyone gets mad at me when I say propaganda. But just take a step back for one moment to consider the preposterousness of this wealth inequality meme.
A San Franciscan has a cost of living index that is ten times higher than a resident of Flint Michigan for the same standard of living. Read that statement twice, then realize that the San Franciscan _must_ pay more than twice as much in taxes as a percentage of income just to afford the _same_ standard of living. The hypothetical San Franciscan working an identical job as the Michiganite will not be able to afford the same standard of living. In what world is this "equality"? This is the problem with drawing arbitrary numbers out of thin air and labeling one number "rich" and one number "poor".
Granted, all things diminish on a relative scale in the extremes. A billionaire is rich in San Franciso or Flint Michigan. But how about a millionaire? Who gets to decide to draw the line between them, the citizens of Flint or the citizens of San Francisco! If you just said popular vote you fail. The problem is again with scale, you can't have millions of people voting on the fate of a minority.
This is why a centralized Federal government will never be equitable or fair. The Federal must necessarily be subordinate to the State, and the State subordinate to the municipality.
I agree, wealth and power are closely related right now. But why? We could focus our energies on the distribution of power instead of the distribution of wealth. We could create a world where power and wealth were not so closely correlated. Arguably, our original constitutional government was a lot closer to that than we are today. That was when we had apportionment of 1:100000 in the U.S. House. That was when State governments elected their senators. That was when it was assumed that any State could withdraw from the Union, that any county could withdraw from a State. It was before a massive, centralized federal government.
You are right, a discussion of inequality would not be propaganda. But this piece presupposes a solution for a perceived problem and appeals to the popular without supporting its conclusions. The Guardian has a long history of leftist puff pieces. Let's not pretend they are fair and balanced.
I'd prefer a world where propaganda wasn't mistaken for journalism. I think it's important to label things what they are. Why is this piece propaganda? Because it presupposes a solution for a perceived problem and appeals to the popular. The problem is that the middle class and poor feel like they are struggling. But that's not what this piece says, it simply says that some people have more. Some people have too much. Way too much. It implies that the solution is to "fix" the income of the people that have "too much". See?
Who cares about socialist propaganda like this? There is no evidence that "equality" in the distribution of wealth is good for middle class and low income persons. For example, if the distribution were more equal on a relative basis, but all brackets had less money than before, is that supposed to be an improvement?
One bright day in late autumn a family of Ants were bustling about in the warm sunshine, drying out the grain they had stored up during the summer, when a starving Grasshopper, his fiddle under his arm, came up and humbly begged for a bite to eat.
"What!" cried the Ants in surprise, "haven't you stored anything away for the winter? What in the world were you doing all last summer?"
"I didn't have time to store up any food," whined the Grasshopper; "I was so busy making music that before I knew it the summer was gone."
The Ants shrugged their shoulders in disgust.
"Making music, were you?" they cried. "Very well; now dance!" And they turned their backs on the Grasshopper and went on with their work.
Sorry, but 25% of a persons salary for two years is a ridiculous amount of money. With a first year programmer making $75-$85k this cost will be similar to college debt. Will these payments qualify as tuition and be tax deductible? That could soften the blow slightly. I like the idea that companies will pay the school for their candidates and relieve the student burden. But why not go all-in on this model and just guarantee that the school will be able to place a graduate? The salary sharing model is just another form of debt.
This tired liberal arts approach of mandatory enlightenment is exactly why we have students graduating with tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt with no marketable skills. Students can become a well-rounded person on their own time, through the many life experiences they can afford when they are not paying off debt. I am so happy to see the world of academia get disrupted, and I cannot wait for the coming revolution where liberal arts education is reserved to those people with a true desire to pursue it.
The author of this piece should not fret. Soon enough computers will program themselves, and they will be vastly superior in this task to their human counterparts. Perhaps then the author will bask in the glory of programming perfection while waiting to be processed in the unemployment line.
Seriously, get over yourself. If the programmers you hire fail at their task, blame your lack of leadership, mentor ship, or hiring skills. They can't all be the A-team, can they? Learn to win with the B-team.
How ironic that this ruthless Bolshevik gave her speech to a crowd in Athens advocating rule by majority, near the spot where Socrates was once sentenced to death by a majority of Athenians.
Uber here is your chance to stand up to a tyrant. Move that shiny headquarters and your tax domicile to a business friendly jurisdiction, and leave San Francisco to stew in its nest.
Your partners either a) know what they are asking you to do is unfair and are asking you anyway, in which case they are assholes, or b) don't know what they are asking you to do is unfair, in which case they are idiots. This is a no-win situation, time to cut your losses and move on as quickly as possible.
This article is inaccurate, or at least, omits every detail that would seem to counter a quasi-socialist position. The United States is the only industrialized nation that imposes taxation of all income regardless of origin on its citizens. For the rest of the world, these offshore investments are not tax evasion, they are merely investments not subject to taxation in their home countries. Maybe, just maybe, the United States should not have tax rates so high that it scares wealth into foreign lands.
The Economic Policy Institute was founded in 1986 by Jeff Faux, who was previously the co-director of the National Center for Economic Alternatives (NCEA). As its name suggests, the NCEA specialized in offering “alternatives”—alternatives characterized as “radical” in The New York Times—to mainstream U.S. domestic policy.
NCEA‘s co-director was Gar Alperovitz, now a University of Maryland professor and author of America Beyond Capitalism. Prior to working at the NCEA, Alperovitz co-authored the essay collection Strategy and Program: Two Essays Toward a New American Socialism, where he advocated using socialist ideas to make the United States a “fairer” nation.
People would still die indeed. But I think technologically our odds favor tackling the issue of colonization over death. If we remain here on this planet, death of the entire species is a certainty. That could happen a lot sooner than people think.
For Christ's sake, is there no safe haven in this world for the unapologetic atheist? I thought that Hacker News might be the one safe zone where Jesus brainwashing is not regurgitated to the masses, but I guess not. News flash for everyone, death is inevitable, and people do not rise from the grave, whether they harbor sympathy for humans or not. Life's meaning, if there is one, is at this stage incomprehensible to human beings. If there is life beyond the grave, it definitely isn't life, and it definitely isn't what you think it is. How many more years must humanity be shackled to superstition and death fear before we fucking get over it and move on to the important work of getting off of this planet? For fucks sake...