flexie

But close to nothing is being recovered. We would recover more or less the same if we introduced a tax on bad weather to be paid by those suffering from it.

The money collected with this tax may or may not reduce air travel and will be spent on government employees, welfare distributions, healthcare, roads, military etc as all other taxes and only a fraction will be spent on improving the environment.

Actually, I find it surprisingly small when considering how powerful it is.

In terms of men (2.2M active and reserve), combat tanks (6,300), artillery (1,700), war ships (130), submarines (70) and fighter planes (2,400) it’s dwarfed by militaries of the past.

Of course the firepower is much larger nowadays and nuclear weapons also make conventional military play a different role, and the US military - although engaged in several conflicts around the world - is mostly a peace time force, but I still find it amazing that the armies of the WWII era were so much larger.

How do I check my Samsung TV with my Samsung remote?

It's terrible that journalists are killed. Press freedom is extremely important. But if these numbers are correct, they are probably good news. I don't think there has been any other point in history where worldwide just 70 journalists were killed every year.

Again, if these numbers are correct, many other professions are far more exposed to politically or financially motivated violence (and the numbers cover many deaths that are not intentionally inflicted). Another way of saying it is that journalism is generally a very safe profession if these numbers are correct. Also, please note that a large part of the deaths occur in the same few countries.

It was until we upvoted it

I think that by now everyone realizes that there are EU skeptics in all member countries. There will always be.

Around 25 percent of Americans want their state to secede (1). A lot of Italians want Northern Italy to part with Southern Italy. Spain has Catalan and Basque separatists. The UK has Scotland, and perhaps even Northern Ireland.

There are many people in many places that think they would be better off in a more (formally) independent state.

For now, the EU skeptics are a small minority in most EU countries. I for one hope it stays like that. The EU has shown remarkable unity when met with Brexit.

1: http://blogs.reuters.com/jamesrgaines/2014/09/19/one-in-four...

Agreed and its very good without. I only mentioned it because they already put smoke from different temples/ baths :-)

I love this.

Nitpick: Rome was a city with a population of up to 1 million people plus millions of animals. We see a few plumes of smoke coming up from bath complexes, but that would just have been a few of thousands. Even if this was in the middle of day in the middle of summer, we should expect to see plumes of smoke coming up from tens of thousands of fireplaces. How else would they cook, bake bread etc. This was a very dense city, so I would expect to see haze over Rome even at noon in July. I would also expect to see soot on all the buildings and dirt in the streets.

I know this is just a model, but it leaves you with the impression that everything was white and clean, which sort of plays well with the thought of Rome as an advanced civilization that gave us a lot of our concepts and ideas for government and law. But it likely wasn't that pristine. It was probably a dirty, stinky, smoke filled, decease ridden place.

But still a wonderful model. I wish we had had these kinds of videos, when we sat through history classes.

You are absolutely right. The only way EVs are not going to overtake by 2030 would be if battery technology somehow stopped improving despite both investments in battery research and investments in battery manufacturing capacity are increasing exponentially.

Already today, the expensive versions of Model S drives 370 miles / 600 km on one charge. If you live in a country with superchargers on main roads, this will be enough for all driving scenarios, whether it's the daily commute to and from work or it's the long vacation drive in mountainous regions or cold weather.

In 3-4 years, similar range will be achieved by mid prized cars, and in 6-8 years, the higher end of the low prized cars will have that range.

And at the same time charging networks expand rapidly, with Tesla's just being one of several.

So around 2030, if you buy a cheap EV, range will simply not be an issue.

Well, it's easy for us to sit here in the developed world and talk about how the world doesn't need growth.

There are billions of people for whom more of the same means more poverty. When everybody in Africa, South America, Asia, heck even the poorer parts of Europe and North America, has access to clean water, food, education, healthcare, safety, justice etc. we can discuss whether we really need growth.

Growth may not be as needed in our parts of the world, but it sure is for a lot of people.

Exactly. And while we are at Google. They were not the first search engine, but merely one of dozens if not hundreds. Facebook was not the first social network. Apple was not the first producer of computers for consumers. Amazon was not the first web store.

Yes that is truly amazing.

That will relegate the US to the 5th place within 20-25 years. And actually, even Pakistan could overtake the US. And if you count the EU as one country, which is increasingly true, then the US could easily be the 7th largest country in 2-3 decades:

India China EU Indonesia Nigeria Pakistan US

And including the EU, which is still catching up with regards to it’s Eastern and Southern European population, all of those places are poised to get much richer in the coming decades.

Apple got public money from Small Business Investment Company.

Nike, Ben&Jerry's, FedEx, and Chipotle got SBA loans.

Google's search algorithm was funded by National Science Foundation.

Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon receive billions from American states in data tax breaks.

Tesla and Space X are heavily subsidized too.

These are just a few famous examples.

The American economy would likely be a lot smaller were it not for public subsidies of various types. Fanatic capitalism is based on a myth, or at least a massive exaggeration, of what private initiative achieves on its own.

The US is the leader of software

1) because software really got started in English. Since then it has been taught, documented, written about in books, blogs and tutorials in English, spoken about in English. Yes, there are translations, and in major languages they sometimes appear fast, but there is 100 times more in English, and you just don't get around becoming a great software developer without English.

2) because the largest software companies in essence make text based products. It's all about text on screens, text processing, text outputting and inputting.

Re 1: A 13 year old Spanish, French, German or Japanese kid is facing a double hurdle when trying to learn programming. Would Bill Gates or Zuckerberg have mastered programming already as kids if to do so they first would have had to learn Italian or Polish? Other countries that either have English as a first language (UK, Australia) or as a strong second language (Netherlands, Scandinavia) do far better than countries where English is a mediocre second language.

Re 2: Let's pretend that these countries that are not strong in English still somehow managed to produce vast numbers of great developers at a relatively early age, so that they have a large enough pool of potential founders of great companies. Could they then market their products at the local home market as virtually all the now great software companies did? Like Amazon selling books in Bellevue, Washington, Microsoft selling to hobbyists on the West Coast, Facebook to students at Harvard, Google at Stanford?

For text based products (text on screens) that would realistically require they launch in the local language, just like their American counterparts did.

Would an 18 year old Italian student have reached beyond Italy, had he launched his new social network at Bocconi? Or Twitter if it launched in Tel Aviv in Hebrew the first year or two? How far would Amazon have gotten, if it had started with the first 10,000 items in the store described in Russian? Microsoft DOS with Korean-inspired commands? How would a Serbian-first Google have fared in 1997-2000? Could it have beaten AltaVista?

Because inflation doesn't take into account all the improvements that have been made. A liter of milk or a dozen eggs may almost be the same in 1630 and 2019. A square kilometer of farm land is not, since the crop yield today far exceeds that of 1630 (it has increased almost tenfold since 1930 due to mechanization, fertilizers and new grain types). So the same piece of land that could feed a family in 1930 now almost feeds 10 families. And, more importantly, land has many more applications now than back then: Factories, sky scrapers, airports, gardens, etc.

Take our homes. In the 1630s, homes had almost no insulation, no electricity, no central heat, no air conditioning, no shower, actually no running water, not even cold. The people who lived there inhaled smoke from the fireplace all day. They had no toilets or sewers, no internet, no cable TV or radio or cell phone connection. From evening until morning they sat in almost complete darkness since candles or oil lamps or whatever they used were crazy expensive. Houses weren't fire proof, barely water proof, wind proof or earth quake safe.

What I describe was true for the richest too. The very richest king or business owner in 1630 lived in a home, which fits my description. How do you even begin to compare his wealth to your wealth? 1,000 servants still couldn't bring him a tiny fraction of the comfort we enjoy. The very richest king in 1630 was dead poor compared to you. And that's just the material part. People were also exposed to crime in a way that we cannot even begin to imagine, and which you wouldn't even find today in our poorest neighborhoods. And their life would likely end decades before ours, and be a lot more painful. Even the richest business owner would not be able to stop his headache with a pill the way you or I can. Or tooth aches. Or fix a broken leg. A small wound could kill him. Most would see a number of their children die, maybe also wife in child birth.

Inflation numbers capture none of this.

It is impossible to compare wealth across centuries. Even really difficult across decades.

The owners of the Dutch East India Company endured conditions poor Europeans would find appalling today. I'd say the average welfare client lives a far more powerful, peaceful, safe and comfortable life today.

And if by wealth we mean power or abilities, at the height of it's power, whether we talk shipping, trading or ship production, the combined manpower of the Dutch East India Company could't produce an output greater than that of a tiny company today.

Facebook has "no clue what kind of stuff gets posted" because they conveniently have decided to have no clue.

Facebook enjoys the protection of its IPR and the right to sell advertisement overseas in places like New Zealand or Europe. Why should New Zealand or Europe allow their business model of close to zero oversight of content? Facebook is not a startup. It's a huge company making billions showing ads to billions.

I am a continental European myself and have lived in three European countries, two of which are republics (not France though). You?

Ah - you don't think it's a little off that a tiny, obscure and exclusive group of 70-100 year olds, dressed up in costumes from a bygone era, gets to decide what goes into your official dictionary? Especially when they talk in such pompous way:

"Words shoot up like geysers from your pen, tumble in cascades, swirl about, bump into each other, are never at rest". That doesn't sound like someone I would chose to guard a language.

I find the sound of the French language absolutely beautiful, including the when you use English words, and I am an admirer of your country's culture. Unlike many here on HN, I also like your version of regulated capitalism. I think the average French person has much better quality of life than the average American. But I really don't see the point in this Académie Française. For a republic, you sure seem to keep a fair share of antiquated institutions and traditions around :-)

Thank you. For too long have these large advertising companies been allowed to disregard copyrights. Google and Facebook will have to pay for using others’ content.

I would have liked to see a higher threshold so that small and medium sized companies weren’t affected. But it’s refreshing that we finally put an end to the blatant abuse by the ad industry.

Let them block the European market for a few hours or days and nothing will happen, except that they lose advertisement revenue. Let them block for months, and European competitors will emerge.

But why on Earth would they do that? And why should they?

The attitude towards streaming and the whole video on demand idea 10-15 years ago reminds me so much on the attitude towards electric vehicles today:

- Quality is too low

- speed is too slow

- many people want to own their movie, not just rent it

- people don’t want to watch movies on a computer

- the large studios and cable companies will never allow it

And within little more than a decade that all changed.

Thanks. So he hasn’t posted at all for 5 years or commented at all for 3.5 years :-)

Why is the creator of HN not on HN anymore? Or is he? Has he entirely moved to Twitter or is he still posting and commenting on HN?

Unless you are one of the founders or investors, there is little reason to rejoice in the current valuations of American tech companies. It has little to do with innovation and a lot to do with extremely lax regulation. What the world needs from tech is not just better AI or drones. The world needs tech to be regulated, and Europe, not the US, is currently providing more regulatory innovations:

- how do we curb the emergence of giant tech corporations with finances the size of nation states that literally threatens democracies through lobbying and fake news? The US was there a hundred years ago with antitrust regulation but it seems like the US is not enforcing antitrust law anymore

- how do we make those giant tech corporations pay fair share of tax? Again, the US used to tax it's corporations, but when it comes to tech, the US seems content with letting them hide their income in foreign tax shelters

- how do we protect content creators like journalists from the giant tech corporations' completely free consumption of their work?

- how do we regulate the so called "sharing economy" so that highly regulated industries such as hotels and taxis are not met with unfair competition by companies who's main innovation seems to be that they don't follow rules?

- how do we secure the privacy of citizens?

There are not many "corporate-owned mini-hotels" but there are certainly hundreds of thousands of people that buy one or more apartments with the purpose of renting them out through AirBnB (or not sell apartments that they would otherwise have gotten rid off).

AirBnB doesn't make the little guy make a few extra bucks renting out a room as much as it makes those who already have money buy up studios and one bedroom apartments. The effect is that such apartments get more expensive for those who just need a place to live.

I doubt that Tesla needs much more demand at the moment. The demand for Model 3 already exceeds Tesla's production capacity. Until the Chinese Giga Factory 3 is up and producing large numbers, Tesla cannot use an increase in demand for much. Next year, Giga Factory 3 will be producing significant numbers, but that may still only be sufficient to meet the demand from the Chinese market.

So Tesla will likely have to build a Giga Factory 4 in Europe or America to really meet the Western demands. Such factory, which is still not formally announced, needs to be built first and will not produce large numbers until 3-4 years from now.

Apart from the obvious production constraints, Tesla has the constraint of expanding the supercharger network and the constraint of expanding their workshops, so that they can service the huge amount of new cars on the roads.

The Danish system is only super simple if you are a salaried employee. Once you run your own business it’s generally as difficult as the American system.

Don't let tales of a collapse of civilization lead to an immediate collapse of your judgement and focus.

This article is full of doom and gloom. Many predictions are made, and they are conveniently quoted as someone else's:

"Some of the people who believe that we face inevitable extinction believe that no one will read this article because we will see a collapse of civilisation in the next twelve months when the harvests fail across the northern hemisphere" (written around 12 months ago)

I for one won't hold my breath.