elfexec

> direct, indirect, induced and catalytic

Nice.

> is estimated at US$ 2,960 billion, equivalent to 8% of world Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Doesn't this prove my point? And that's including every conceivable thing possibly related to aviation ( direct, indirect, induced and catalytic ). Not just flights. Not quite, "grind down to a halt" is it?

For the last time, if flights stopped, the world economy isn't going to grind down to a halt. Flights are luxuries more than anything. The world can survive without luxuries. The oil industry, gas industry, international shipping, railroads, trucks, etc can bring the world economy to a grinding halt. Not sure why you are still arguing when objectively, your statement was wrong.

Why not just say instead of "the world economy grinding to a halt", you meant to say "the world economy will be slightly inconvenienced"?

> Otherwise it feels like vaporware as they presented it, even if the work is valuable and credible.

Whatever happened to all the graphene hype from 5 years ago? For a while, graphene was the wonder material that was going to cure cancer, give us fusion and make us immortal. Everything was supposed to be made of graphene material by now. And suddenly people/media stopped talking about graphene.

Strange to see so many comments praising the way this guy died. Do people really want to die suddenly in front of strangers without any time to prepare and get your house in order?

So many here say that's the way they want to go, but that's hard to believe. Personally, I'd rather be given a few months or years notice so that I can prepare.

> Not a lot of goods move by air, but people do.

This simply isn't true. More people use the NYC metro in one day than people fly in the entire US over an entire year. Comparatively speaking, hardly anyone flies compared to using trains, buses, cars and every other major form of transportation.

> A lot of the world depends on tourism.

No. The world depends on oil, gas, etc. The world depends on transportation of goods. The world depends on manufacturing and production. The world doesn't depend on flights.

> I also use a lot of energy. I pay extra to make sure that energy all comes from carbon neutral sources. That makes a much bigger difference to climate change than using a plane.

No. It makes no difference. Other than allowed privileged people to pat themselves on the back.

I agree with you that flights make up a tiny fraction of overall emissions. But you are completely wrong about the impact of flying on the world economy. Ending flights won't bring the "world economy to a grinding halt." Just like ending flights would have neglible effects on overall emissions, it'll have neglible effects on the world economy. But use whatever rationalization to fly if it helps you sleep at night.

> It would however bring the world economy to a grinding halt.

I think you overestimate the importance of flights to the world economy. If all flights ended tomorrow, the world economy would chug along and hardly notice. Banning trains, trucks or ships would be devastating to the world economy though.

> We need to focus on interventions that will actually make a difference. Sadly, most of those are through government regulation, which most major economies are unwilling to do.

Both those interventions would actually hurt the world economy.

Let me guess, you take a lot of flights every year? Can't defend flights under the false assumption it'll hurt the world economy and then support "interventions" that will actually hurt the world economy.

> Did you read too fast or something? I'm talking about people who's emailed me out of the blue.

Sorry, I did.

> Huh? What are you even talking about?

Your post. The purpose of your post. If you didn't think it was weird, why would you seek validation here?

> You don't seem to understand how to communicate via text, and seem to misinterpret things in bizarre ways, and/or put people down.

Text? I thought you said email?

> Meet who?

I was very specific in my comment.

> Distributed teams are a thing. ;)

Oh you didn't mention people you were currently working with. Your post made it seem like just random people in your past. Of course thanking people you work with for their help and contribution is normal and appreciated.

> Sounds like your life is lived very differently, and you just can't relate. No worries. ;)

Maybe. If it works, just keep doing you. Why even bother seeking validation?

If people are contacting you out of the blue and you are contacting people out of the blue, then it's a norm for you so why bother asking here? Seems strange, that's all.

> China's meteoric rise in the last two decades was born from the rise of the middle class

I think you have it backwards. The rise of china's middle class was born from china's meteoric economic growth in the last two decades.

Mergesort is more intuitive than selection sort, insertion sort, bubble sort, etc? I highly doubt you can write merge sort without thinking about it. And I highly doubt you can write bug free merge sort without thinking about it. Merge sort and quick sort are notorious for bugs introduced by trying to keep track of the indexes.

> It's very intuitive and simple, at least to me ?

Once you understand mergesort, you have a eureka moment and it all makes sense. But I've never met anyone who thought merge sort was intuitive and simple - especially when learning it the first time.

> The people who've contacted me (via email) to say positive things I've generally taken at face value about <whatever they said>.

That's good to hear, but what else do you expect them to say? You put them on the spot and I suspect 99% of the people would be polite.

> Maybe I just don't feel people are being weird/creepy when they thank me for the effort I've put into things?

If you didn't think it was weird/creepy, why are you here trying to get validation? I suspect deep down you know it is a bit weird and that's why you are seeking validation here. Or this is just another of those manipulative social engineering ploys you see all over social media.

> Re: "email is impersonal". To me, it's not. But then... I use a lot of emoticons and similar, to help convey things better than "impersonally". :D

That would come off as even creepier unless you are contacting family/friends. And if you are contacting family/friends, why not tell them in person when you meet them? And if it is just business acquaintances who helped you out, emails full of emoticons would come off as silly and unprofessional. But then again, I'm one of those ancient former 90s kids.

I also love that with these types of self-validation posts, only validating comments we know deep down are not true are upvoted, but the reality based critical comments we know deep down are true get downvoted. But whatever the agenda was in regards to your post, I hope you got what you wanted out of it.

> Not press-meat but a true 6 ounce breast filet. The other fast food stores use junky meats.

Maybe not even junk "meats" at all.

"Those results were averaged: the oven roasted chicken scored 53.6 per cent chicken DNA, and the chicken strips were found to have just 42.8 per cent chicken DNA. The majority of the remaining DNA? Soy."

https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/marketplace-chicken-fast-fo...

> I remember using SoftICE to cheat in games back in the 1990’s.

Pretty much the intro to cracking software and hacking games for 90s kids.

> I wish I would’ve been knowledgeable to do something more useful than making myself invincible in Mortal Kombat or giving my characters super powers in UFO: Enemy Unknown (aka: X-Com outside North America).

Or maybe you were too busy owning noobs to do anything else.

No. It would come off as weird or creepy just to email someone out of the blue. Also, email is impersonal and seems like you are trying to solicit something from them.

If someone had a positive impact on you just tell them when you meet in person. If you are really intent on contacting them for whatever reason, then a personal letter might be better.

"What is my purpose".

"You pass butter".

Welcome to the real world. It beats you down and keeps you down. But the key is to keep going on. Stick to the sisyphean task of rolling the rock back up the mountain.

It sounds like you are burnt out or having a midlife crisis, so good luck finding whatever it is you are looking for.

It's amazing free entertainment for us and great free publicity for SpaceX. It's one of those rare win-win situations.

It bothers me that you are being downvoted. One of the reasons retirement benefits were created was so people could retire and open up their jobs to the next generation.

It's nice that someone held onto a job til 102, but it also means that at least two generations of young people lost out on a job that they could use to buy a home, start a family, etc.

I'm not for forced retirement but someone holding onto a position to 102 is really ridiculous. Especially for a taxpayer funded government job with terrific retirement benefits/pension.

At some point, shouldn't a person acknowledge they've taken more than their fair share and step aside so another gets a chance? Isn't it part of the social contract that you retire, collect benefits and let others have a job?

If this employee had to work to survive ( pay rent/mortgage, bills, etc ), then more power to him. But otherwise, he really did a disservice to the younger generations by staying on as long as he did.

> but unless I'm mistaken, the conviction rate we're talking about is that of people _charged_ overall.

You are mistaken.

"Nearly all criminal cases that go to trial in Japan end in a guilty verdict."

" Public prosecutors typically concentrate on suits where conviction is almost guaranteed, leading to the suspension of around 60 percent of criminal cases in Japan without an indictment."

https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c05401/order-in-the-c...

So japanese prosecutors "drop" 60% of the cases/charges. The only cases they pursue are those they think they can win. They win 99% of those.

> That 60% figure in Canada is precisely referring to people who were charged, and whose charges were later dropped.

No. In the audio, they specifically stated that 37% ( or about a 3rd of the cases in canada ) are withdrawn, stayed or dropped. Meaning only 63% get to a jury. Of those, 3% are acquitted.

> Over 99.4% of people charged in Japan are eventually convicted.

Once again, this is not true. Only 40% of those charged ever see trial. Of those, 99.4% are convicted. In other words, 39.8% of those charged are convicted.

> It's time for the EU to either become a real institution or go away.

It is a real institution.

> Building an army and taking responsibility for its own defense is a step towards realism.

They are planning to create the army outside of the EU framework.

> She knows the US has little incentive to strong arm Russia into keeping the pipeline open.

Man, you really are uniformed about everything EU related. The US is trying to stop pipelines from Russia to Germany. The US doesn't want germany being reliant on russian gas. The US wants germany reliant on american gas. We are even planning on sanctioning companies working on building pipelines from russia to western europe.

https://apnews.com/a038942bb9f0f1af239c6a56a54ae408

> I see little downside to the improvement of global affairs with a stronger EU. Competition and self-sufficient agents are always good.

If you think competition and self-sufficieny are always good, shouldn't you be against the EU? The EU is the opposite of competition and self-sufficiency. It's 28 nations cooperating rather than competing and becoming dependent rather than self-sufficient.

> The Wikipedia figure for Canada is wrong. The straight acquittal rate is ~3%, but the other 97% are not convictions, only about 60% are.

The wikipedia article isn't really wrong. Only 60% of the cases go before a jury. The conviction rate for cases that get to the jury around the 95% rate.

> They also interview a professor who authored a book on the Japanese justice system who explains why the conviction rate is so high.

Yes. Pretty much prosecutors only prosecute cases they think they'll win and have leverage over defendants. The same issue you have in Canada and we have in the US.

> It turns out we can answer questions like this without relying on uninformed guesses by HN commenters.

Too bad you didn't choose bother to answer any of the questions.

> I wonder how many innocent plead guilty in a plea bargain

Probably a lot more than we'd like to admit.

> just because they don't have the resources to fight the charges.

It's not just that they don't have the resources. It's also a matter of risk assessment because a jury can be fickle. Lets say you have 20% chance of conviction and 80% chance of acquittal. The prosecutor offers you a plea deal for 1 year ( you get out in 6 months with good behavior ). If you choose to go to trial, the prosecutor says he is going to charge you with everything he can and if found guilty, you go to prison for 25 years. What do you do? You have 20% chance of spending quarter century in prison. Or you have 100% chance of 6 months ( 1 year at the max )? I think most people would choose the latter.

> Quite perverse incentives.

In a way. The system incentivizes plea deals because the prosecutor doesn't want to lose cases. So he only wants to try cases that are open and shut and go the plea deal route with the rest.

Are you a fan of Alien(s)? The first thought that popped up when I read Xenobot is Xenomorph.

I remember Harvard defending their race-based admissions policy because of privileges some groups had and disadvantages other groups had. But they never addressed their legacy admissions. After all, who is more advantaged/privileged than the children of harvard grads? If Harvard was truly interested in leveling the playing field, they would also eliminate legacy admissions. If Harvard and other elite schools were consistent, I'd be less annoyed by their admissions policy.

Hopefully this move by Johns Hopkins gets the ball rolling and other schools will soon follow suit.

> Isn't the answer the euro?

Only 19 out of the 28 european union members use the euro. So I don't think the euro (a 19 year old currency ) is the answer. Unless something changes, then in the future it might be one of the answers.

> you won't even have to worry about the brits messing with it...

The brits never adopted the euro as their currency, so they never messed with it to begin with.

> Stable, inflation proof, light or no sanctions. As brexit proceeds a

Stable... brexit. The problem with the euro is that its political foundation ( european union ) seems weak. With britain leaving the european union, with the EU sovereign debt crisis and potential for further problems in the near term, it's more likely the EU will break apart and the euro discarded than the euro will replace the dollar as the reserve currency of the world. Being the reserve currency of the world requires the political and military backing of a stable superpower. For all our problems, the US isn't losing states like the EU is losing countries.

If the dollar's stranglehold in the world break, we'll probably get regionally dominant currencies. The dollar will still dominate the western hemisphere. The eastern hemisphere will be dominated by regional economic powers and their currencies.

> Why would the United States be the one to decide if Germany is allowed to build a pipeline to Russia or not?

Because the US is the sole guarantor of German sovereignty. It's why the US has tens of thousands of troops in germany. It's why US decides if and how much oil/gas Japan or South Korea gets from Russia. It's why the US decides if the Dutch get to sell ASML semiconductor equipment to China. It's why the US dictates whether Canada arrests a chinese executive. Pax Americana. Protection doesn't come cheap. It certainly isn't free.

> Image if it was Germany that used sanctions to prevent the US from building a pipeline to Mexico. Would you be ok with that?

Of course not, but germany is in no position to dictate anything to the US. That's the point. If germany had tens of thousands of troops stationed in the US and provided safety to the US and mexico was germany's enemy, then germany would prevent the US from doing business with mexico.

I'm not saying it's right or moral. It's just basic geopolitics. If you depend on another nation for your safety and host tens of thousands of their troops in your country, you are really not a sovereign nation and hence don't have the luxury of making all the decisions on your own.

> I find it very curious that the Spanish Influenza epidemic is almost completely forgotten;

In the US, we are taught about the Spanish Flu in school. The news mentions the Spanish Flu every year during flu season. Every other epidemic movie mentions the Spanish Flu. There are even documentaries about it.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/influenza/

Without a doubt WW1 overshadows the Spanish Flu, but that doesn't mean it is anywhere close to being forgotten.

> Working it backward, you'd see the bad effects before being considered an "addict", the extreme case.

You can see the bad effects on people on their way to extreme addiction. There is a difference between that and the vast majority of ordinary users of the internet. It's like the difference between someone who plays the lotto once in a while or drinks on special occasions vs people on their way to gambling or alcohol addiction.

> I'm just saying the title isn't completely click-baity.

The title is clickbait. Sciencedaily is well known for doing that as they take science press releases and fluff it up in order to get traffic. I guess in this tough media environment, you can't blame them since everyone clickbaits.

The internet doesn't reduce study skills. Problematic internet use does. So the title is absolutely clickbait since most people who use the internet aren't affected.

> The effects of increased internet usage could be seen before reaching that stage.

But that's true of any addiction - alcohol, drug, gambling, etc. You can see the effects before it reaches the extreme stage.

> Job automation underpins the explosion of economic growth we’ve seen since the 1830’s industrial revolution.

What underpinned the explosion of economic growth in the 1830s to 1850s was opium money we stole from china and whale blubber. What underpinned economic growth since the 1850s was oil and population explosion along with dumping large populations in small areas in order to boost consumption.

We know for a fact that automation doesn't underpin economic growth because if it did, Japan and most of europe would be the centers of economic growth. Why has automating Japan lagged so far behind china or the US since the 90s? Their population has stagnated. While China added 300 million more people and the US added 100 million people in that time, Japan added hardly any.

Here are the list of the fastest growing economies. Automation isn't the first word to come to mind when I think of many of these countries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_...

Economic growth is essentially population growth + moving that population to cities so that they can consume more efficiently. If automation truly underpins economic growth, that list of GDP growth rates would be led by primarily america, european nations and a few east asian nations.

> Kids from low income families are screwed over - again.

No matter what, there will be disadvantages, but it's not the end of the world. At least they have less screentime at home right?

> Tech parents are always like "f yea, of course you block youtube"

"Always"? I highly doubt that. Actually, I bet most tech parents guide their kids on which youtube channels to watch because most tech parents watch youtube.

> I don't want to have to sit next to them all night making sure that they are only doing 'productive' work.

They are kids. Why are you concerned about 'productive' work. Sounds like you are dealing with a company and employees rather than a family and kids.

Calm down. Everything will be okay. People really do turn into their parents.

Agreed. Instead of removing the accounts, they should just freeze the accounts and keep them public so that we can all see what they've been up to. Maybe a red check mark to show they are verified bots?

> Any composition of conscious agents is itself a conscious agent.

That's a very reductionist viewpoint and I'm not sure how correct it is. It's like saying water is wet because its hydrogen and oxygen molecules are wet. But who knows, it might turn out to be true. It will be interesting to know what the real cause of consciousness is though. Hopeful the question of consciousness will be definitively answered within our lifetimes.