408 karma · joined January 8, 2014
Meanwhile, FB really stands out as the "Microsoft of social networks" in this decade. They really manage to cut every new head as it pops up from the ground. FB now works as a system, while any other competitor looks like a feature.
There is very little to support this. FN has been around 20% for decades, racking in about the same 5-6M voters at most elections. Structurally, far right in France (as in other countries) splits up as soon as it starts compromising to reach a wider audience. Also structurally, contrary to UK/US, all elections in France have 2 rounds - and Le Pen will never get to win the 2nd one.
Yes, she and Mélenchon are symptoms of anger/apathy. Netherlands and Germany have similar issues. It doesn't mean the extremes are nowhere near winning.
> The EU is falling apart because of issues within the EU
Predictions on how the EU will die started in 1957. The last 10 years have put an impossible amount of stress on it - and here it is, alive, and with increasing voter support.
I still have the feeling this is more of a stunt to bring attention on Station F than on the startups themselves. Beyond the buzz, there is very little vision. It's a giant intensive farm in a denser, currently-under-redevelopment neighborhood.
In this super dense setting, they're piling up various talent for sort-of-low-cost rents, hoping to raise unicorns thanks to nearby campuses, increased VC flow in Paris and general attention towards startups. This strikes me as a formula thought out by people who have never actually been in a successful startup (Roxanne Varza has been successful at _talking about_ startups, never at actually building things).
One outcome is that all those points successfully connect together. Another, more probable outcome is that it will turn out impossible to keep focus, talent and purpose in a giant, open space (also probably soon to be under-maintained judging by French standards).
- health and education are dirt cheap. This is phenomenal for a family (even compared to the the U.K.). The downside is you have less control on your kids/health.
- roles and culture in most companies are still stuck in the 90s. Push and evangelize on what/how you do and you'll get fitter offers
- you'll work less. More holidays, shorter work weeks. Life in Paris is stressfull so you'll need that. A nice bonus is that most Europe cities are a short flight away, great for week ends. Lyon/Munich/Amsterdam/Barcelona are all excellent places too (better than Paris and even London in many respects)
Hopefully we get at least some of you guys to move over here and push for a better community : )
As a non-FB user, I hit every day a Facebook captcha to test if I'm a bot, each time I land near a Facebook site. When it's not a captcha, a panel hides a third of the Facebook page.
I have a "shadow" empty FB account that I sometimes use: if I'm logged in, anything I watch online ends up polluting recommendations and suggested sites. I looked up information on Syria and Trump the other day - I now have creepy sites displayed on my suggested sites. I also get giant "YOU ARE NOW QUITTING FACEBOOK" alerts anytime I try to click a link to, yes, go to this address.
We all obsess on Google/Apple for privacy and yet do not hold Facebook to any standard regarding an open, honest web.
I feel we're all getting slowly conditioned by Facebook (and others) to stay siloed. To fear that the web we browse will have "consequences" and that we should avoid being curious altogether.
It's by now clear that the entire purpose of FB is to build a "unified profile" that advertisers can track on- and offline.
We're all in denial on the consequences of this unified tracking. If we were in the Renaissance, anonymous publications like Spinoza's would be impossible. Free speech and opinion _requires_ freedom to change mind, wander around.
This has to stop.
Also the cognitive gap between a AI and a human brain has to grow and transform unpredictably in the next decades. We may be puzzled to understand how it "thinks" the same way we still don't get exactly how DNA operates.
Agreed - except to increase cash flow to get to build >500k Tesla 3 fast enough.
They're climbing a mountain of risk at this point. If the first T3 production year is too low in quality and/or quantity, the rest of the reservations could evaporate, especially as the rest of the industry is finally embracing electric.
A utility version of Tesla X could churn out some hard needed cash.
Also puzzled that the attacker manages to guess the victim's password (described as complex). In my experience, 3 incorrect login attempts on iCloud block the site for a while.
Is there more to this story?
- "unrestricted free trade will be awesome"
- peace is not at stake, au contraire
- decentralization is awesome. And small is beautiful!
- it doesn't matter that it's a little about xenophobia
It sounds more like a prayer to Ricardo and the Seven because there really are no arguments given. "Let's try this awesome experiment because we're awesome!"
We'll hear this a lot - especially from the Boris Johnson side of the equation.
And the UK may well get the best out of this. It could become the mythical european Dubai, half fiscal paradise and half tech/creative/trade hub. This would also mean that the biggest losers would be the exact same people would voted for Brexit: white, older, English middle class. Politically, this will be interesting.
Also: borders are sacred in Europe. States don't want to split/remodel per a 60 years old tradition.
There is a very strong case for indy Scotland (and i support it) but I admire that Sturgeon is smart enough to try and get the best of all possible outcomes.
True - though the gov white paper mentioned that it was, in effect, binding because ignoring its result would irreversibly damage representative democracy.
Even if the UK were somehow to backtrack: they broke any faith and goodwill on EU side (not the entire EU but key members).
Politically, the Tories have to rally Brexit - or they will get killed by UKIP in the next election run.
The box is open. At some point in 10-20 years, a new agreement will probably bring the UK back to most of its EU membership. Until then, there's no way back.
Warning of a constitutional crisis is good tactics. It probably will not lead to canceling brexit, though it will probably break the 1998 devolution law and change how Scotland can "sell" independence and its claim to stay in the EU.
So it looks like this is either to lay ground for a "fast track" EU access due to special circumstances - OR getting special new rights within the UK to compensate leaving the EU.
There's also nowhere in Europe such a strange alliance between libertarians buccaneers (Johnson) and hardcore reactionaries (Farage).
Protectionists and reactionaries on their own would not win a referendum anywhere.
As shown in Cameron's [white paper on Brexit from last February](https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachm...), the critical part of the exit process is to buy more than 2 years to define the new relationship (article 50 has basically only this period as a hard fact).
The paper does bold that a realistic timeline would be ~10 years. Meaning the UK needs to find bullet points to negotiate additional time... with all the free goodies of being still a "passive" member of the EU.
So they're buying 4 months now. They need this to understand their leverages, friends and foes. Many in Europe will be receptive on avoiding a clash. Merkel right now shows signs of resilience.
Make no mistake: part of the City and tech industry sees a strong potential in Brexit - as long as there is no "free fall" period after 2 years.
Everything will be about buying time.
On demographics alone, though, the deal doesn't seem to make sense.
Yet it's puzzling how much it fails to improve its basic product, 1 year in Dorsey's comeback. On mobile, the search/explore screens are mostly irrelevant. On desktop, they could position themselves as quasi TV channels with live content update.
Yes, they lost the social wars and that's fine. They won the media war: Twitter's mindshare vs its actual engagement rates makes it an amazing opportunity.
Really hope it doesn't fade into a glorified RSS feed and manages to build on the intensity of its content.
As a willpower coach he could have found the force to not publish this clickbait story.
Probably the worst type of junk if this stuff hiding behind fair criticism to advertise fake talent.
Thanks, didn't have those figures. I used a study from a Hyperloop study group (can't find the URL) who found that the most efficient setup would be to assemble 5 pods together (total ~100-150 pax) , with 1 departure every 5 minutes so ~1500pax/hour.
Now a realistic turnover time (unload, clean+inspect, load, launch and contingency) would be 10' per pod - and this would already be pretty agressive.
So if you launch a pod at 15 seconds intervals, a station would need capacity for >40 pods. Inbound and outbound pods would need to station 3' upon arrival and pre-launch - again, super aggressive figure. Imagining we keep the whole setup on 6 tracks with a swapping device at the end of the tracks and relatively narrow 3m wide platforms, a station would be >40m wide and long, not accounting for circulations etc. Realistic figures would be 100x50m stations - or an equivalent volume if tracks are stacked instead of juxtaposed.
This amount of underground real estate would just not be found in most Europe cities, or at punitive prices, not even mentioning NYMBYism. HSR managed to take off thanks to heavy direct or indirect subsidies and by leveraging existing infrastructure (stations and many rail connections). Hyperloop won't get the same sweet deals.
I'm a Hyperloop supporter for the scifi potential in it, though I just don't get how and where it can get built in this world.
One of the largest problem I can see is not technical. The consensus is that a "standard" Hyperloop track (between 2 cities, 300 to 800km apart) would have a ~1,500 passengers/hour max capacity. High speed rail, such as Eurostar, would be around 10,000 passengers/hour.
Even if Hyperloop managed to get built at half the price of HSR (which would already be a feat, there's zero chance they'll do it at 10% of HSR price), this makes a very thin passenger flux to deliver reasonable amounts of operational cash.
Where HSR can deliver $7M to $14M daily with $150 ticket price at peak time, Hyperloop would max out at $2M daily with $300 tickets during peak hour. And those prices would probably kill their market anyway.
And that's with an entirely new transport platform to fund with many unknowns such as metal fatigue for pods in near-vacuum at those speeds, passenger tolerance for accelerations and lateral movements etc.
Maybe the business plan for passenger planes and trains was also that hazy back then?
It may be that it takes 1-2 centuries to software-ize our govs.
And are we so sure it would be more efficient? GitHub as a constitution would be a blessing and a curse.
A few reasons why this should join the "pills will replace food" drama:
- a long-term trend in wealthier societies has been to get more control on how they have and raise children. Birth control, education, etc. Less, "more valuable" children. Getting (and losing) a child has more individual and social significance today than in 17th century Europe where 30-50% kids would die before adulthood
- another trend is for people to look and welcome ways to bypass biological constraint. Low fertility, age, more recently known genetical defects.
- a very recent trend among very select groups has now embraced the idea of "perfect children".
Now will this last trend ever go mainstream? Are people willing to _pay_ to "improve" or even only pick some traits of their children?
Or will most people have to resort to artificial reproduction because of low fertility and longer life expectancy?
And then does any of this mean "the end of sex"?
To become a market, artificial reproduction would need to be reliable ("I want my kids to get blue eyes") and confortable. I'm not a specialist, but I get from my 23andme data that so little is determined by our genes. And we're very far from understanding how genes affect each others.
Among my friends who resorted to artificial insemination for various reasons, they had sex - a lot. Hormones are here to stay.
Humans are complex organisms and this (along with the "uploaded brain" fad) forget about the chemistry that shapes intelligence, behaviors, life.
People would couldn't will soon be able to get kids. Some will possibly choose to pick a few traits. Most of the planet is _for many generations_ going to have sex.
I would have thought that a planet's life form, shape and variety would be determined by:
1- the energy output of nearest star
2- the planet's gravity
He barely mentions gravity which is surprising. Earthlings probably wouldn't be as tall with 1.3x more gravity. Maybe life wouldn't even have made it out of water, or much more slowly.
Evolution would mean "heavier" eggs would be harder to carry. The entire evolution process hangs around reproduction so what would that mean?
Same for less gravity - except it would _probably_ be on a smaller planet. Gravity correlates with planet size in the solar system. Would <0.8G be enough to retain water, atmosphere, etc?
Somehow I'm not surprised to find out one day that an intelligent alien life would look a lot like us, on a planet that looks a lot like Earth.
The offices were usually nicer overall in the US (roomier, more recent), except for the bathrooms. Small, low quality, like 2 stalls in a 600 persons building. Usually pretty far away from work stations.
Turns out labor code enforces much higher standard for bathrooms in most Europe countries. IIRC for France: 1 stall for 10 person minimum, with a top value somewhere (maybe 10 stalls max), with adequate AC, lighting, water-saving systems, etc. There's a maximum walking distance to workspace. I believe it also now requires full-size partitions (or maybe in mixed toilets only if there's not enough room for separate). It should also now be 100% accessible in new office constructions and redevelopments. An architect friend told me those costs do add up, so the money doesn't go in fancier paint or lighting. It can also limit growth in team size if there are not enough stalls in the building.
I suppose it doesn't change in the US as a perfect "dark design": shitty bathrooms means people will use them less.
So bathrooms sum up the pros/cons of market regulation.
Also speaking of regulation, I like that the german labor code requires that all employees should have permanent access to daily light (with precise lumen values).
The futur or "solar roads" is clearly not highways and express lanes. It's slow speed, commercial areas - as badly presented by Colas.
For the context, land use in Europe is so different than in the US. Suburbs don't crawl as much and space is more of a premium.
Thinking at a really local level, for a new retail space like this: https://goo.gl/maps/BRkQ5qNyaQU2 - the fields around the center are either here to stay or would be built on.
About 80% of this commercial space is parking lots. It's wasted space. Why not use it to produce power? Why use additional fertile or constructible terrain to add solar tiles?
Since 2015, businesses in France also have to build either gardens or solar panels on their rooftops (new constructions and redevelopments). So that's turning 90% of space used into something productive or "user-friendly". Again why not do it?
The pricing of those solar tiles is interesting: 6 euros per max watt produced on location. Cheap enough - and you get free power for parking users.
It's also great PR for solar to get inserted in people's lives at such locations.
I find it actually a great idea, especially with more electrical cars looking for plugs at those locations.
Some details and a video on https://www.aruco.com/2016/01/1000km-routes-solaires-france/ . The video does show how they think of it for side roads (and don't say it because PR).
edit: also part of the breakthrough here is that the upper layer is made of recycled glass and resin and is not slippery.
Bit surprised by the negativity around this on HN.