pyoung

Adding to the anecdotes[1], of the last 5 computers that I have owned, 0/2 of the Macs are still running, compared to 2/3 of the non-macs. Because of this, I refuse to ever purchase a used mac, the discount is not worth the risk, especially considering the fact that it's nearly impossible to repair them on your own.

[1]Random idea for a website/service: Computer reliability statistics by model/year. Could be really useful for people in the market for used machines. Not sure how/where you would get the data though. Seems like forums are overrun with anecdotes, but actual data is few and far between.

Yup, the Samsung model. Use it for most of my work. I've got an old clunker that is x86, but that thing is showing it's age so only use it when it's absolutely necessary (when there is no ARM port for an application i need, for example). The battery life and weight/size of the chromebook are really awesome. Using crouton to run an OS is pretty painless, although you do run into a few bugs every now and then. Also, the hard drive needs to be supplemented with and SD card. But for the most part, works as good as a MacBook Air for a quarter of the price.

I like sublime, but my primary computer has an ARM processor and there is no sublime port. The sublime developers have stated that they don't have the bandwidth to handle an ARM port, and that's fair. But I find it difficult to justify paying for a license, when I can only use the editor ~25% of the time. An editor that is sublime-like and works everywhere would be awesome. I can't tell if atom has this, but a hosted version would also be cool, allowing users to hop on the service and do some quick work when on unfamiliar machines.

>The increased productivity also releases human capital and actual capital to pursue new things and create new jobs. This leads to new jobs in entirely new industries.

Correct, but it doesn't necessarily result in an equal number of or more jobs than before.

>but we must accept that it will happen, simply by looking at all of human history.

This is where I think we disagree the most. I don't think history sets a good precedent for predicting the future, especially in this current environment. At no point in history have we had robots and AI. We still don't have that now, and there are no guarantees that we will fully achieve AI, but in many areas we are making humans obsolete and I expect this trend to continue. Using your eariler analogy, what happened to the horses after Ford introduced mass produced cars? They were turned to glue. In many ways, this is the issue we are currently facing.

I do agree that highly skilled and entrepreneurial folks will create new industries which could dramatically alter the economic landscape, but I am still not convinced that this is going to result in full employment. These new industries will still be taking advantage of the highly automated and efficient technologies that other industries use and lower-skilled and less educated people are going to find it increasingly difficult to find work.

Taking your example a step further (and subsequently bringing it into a more modern context), what happens to those jobs when Google (or someone) builds a mass production driver-less car? Sure, a few thousand engineers will be employed, but that's barely going to put a dent in the millions of taxi/truck/delivery drivers that now find themselves out of work.

This is a matter of opinion, as none of us can predict the future, but I believe that one of the purposes and goals of technology is to replace and reduce the drudgery of human labor. If I was a VC, I would be investing in almost any labor-replacing tech startup that came across my desk because the market for the tech has already been validated (companies paying for the labor) and you are bringing a more efficient solution to that market. You believe that this process somehow results in more jobs. I believe, baring massive changes in the education and social infrastructures, that this process inevitably leads to fewer jobs.

>'technology gone done taken our jerbs'

followed by:

>I sometimes daydream about how big you could grow a company (in revenues) without ever having more than ten people.

Do you not see the contradiction there?

>...no use to the economy and thus, most probably, to society.

I think you made too big of a jump there. We are already being confronted with a situation where vast quantities of people are no use to the modern economy. The fact is technology is going to replace a lot of what we traditionally considered work. This does not mean that these people are worthless, they still hold social and cultural value to society (well, most people, there will always be people who are a drain on society, but we have that now and I don't think that will ever change).

>... it creates a huge power lobby...

We already have that. And to make matters worse, the current process of distributing welfare is highly political and manipulated by special interests. With a BI, the power stays in place, but at least the bureaucracy and special interests are removed from the process.

I had similar sentiments about the vanity of blogging. But I also like to write, and found that posting something publicly forces me to take the task seriously and actually attempt to do a good job and/or follow through. I reconcile with my concerns of vanity by doing nothing to promote the blog. From what I can tell, I have yet to attract a single reader, other than spam bots. The added bonus to not having any readers, is that I don't have to worry if the topics I write about are interesting or original.

I consider the blog to be good writing practice, and if/when the time comes where a job I am pursuing requires some extensive writing experience, at the very least I will have a small body of work to show off.

There are some complications to the implementation of this system. If you choose to incentivize the Realtor to stay below a specific budget, the Realtor might start steering you to cheaper units (re: smaller, shabbier, poor neighborhoods) in order to get a bigger commission. If you base the commission on the discount negotiated off the list price of a home, you may push the Realtor into low balling offers and not closing deals (not to mention, in many markets, homes sell for over list price).

Probably the best method would be too use a flat fee, or a percentage of list, and then add bonus commissions for performance in negotiations, using the average 'over/under asking price' in the local market as an index. But this is probably too complicated for most people, and at the end of the day, the Realtor is more concerned about the volume of deals they can close rather than the individual deals, so performance based commissions will still probably have minimal impact on behavior.

Would it be possible to ban the re-sale of domain registrations? This way squatting would only be done for trademark protection. I could see issues where bigger companies buy up all the related domain names to their specific industry, in the hopes of hindering future competition. Without re-sellers, that tactic would be easier, but it still might be better then the current system.

The nytimes article listed in the parent, which is what sparked the 7-min workout craze, discusses and links to the study. I am not going to get into too much detail, but the general idea is that working a bunch of different muscle groups at high intensity for short periods gets you most of the benefits of longer endurance based workouts.

So I believe he expressed his sentiments (that I brought up in the parent comment) in the Pando Daily fireside chat[1]. Its over an hour long so I am not going to re-watch it to confirm this. But keep in mind that when this interview was conducted TSLA was trading at $30 a share and was finally starting to look promising after a few years of near bankruptcy and failure, but wasn't quite the Wall Street darling that it is today. More recent comments indicate that he will be with the company for at least another 5 years[2]. The talks with apple appear to have happened somewhere in between these two interviews. It's entirely possible that Apple and Elon were simply discussing partnership opportunities. But it's not too far fetched to think that after 8 years of near failure, Musk was considering cashing out. Tesla's recent momentum might have given him a second wind, but in the end, SpaceX is his real baby.

As an aside, after hearing the Pando Daily interview, it never occurred to me that Elon would sell out his stake in Tesla. He feels more like the type to either sell the company entirely, or keep his stake but pass the reins off to someone else.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uegOUmgKB4E [2] http://www.treehugger.com/cars/elon-musk-how-long-hell-stay-...

The point of the 7-min workout isn't to keep you in as good of shape as a 5+ hour workouter, the point is to get 90% of the health benefits in a minimal amount of time as the 5+ hour person. The 7-min workout is designed for the busy professional concerned about their health. If you want to run triathlons, you still are going to need to slog it out doing training workouts.

I don't really have the time to dig up a link, but I recall that Elon mentioned in an interview that his goals for Tesla were to get it up and running and then hand it off to someone else. He wasn't particularly specific about this, but I think long term, he would rather focus on SpaceX. So while I agree that Tesla doesn't really need anything from Apple at this point in time, it's worth keeping this point in mind.

This is a pretty bad analogy, and even at that, it's not completely thought through. Google is responsible for a lot of the infrastructure on the modern web. Gmail, ad networks, google apps, data centers, etc... If they disappeared this weekend it would be chaos.

If exxon mobile disappeared, we might see an oil shock similar to the one in the 1970's, but more likely, due to strategic reserves, we would see a gradual increase in prices, followed by a ton of investment into increasing production capacity by the other oil companies.

I think you are taking these arguments too literally. The issue isn't inequality in itself, it is the degree to which inequality exists. Wealth inequality in the US is at all time highs. Part of this is due to globalization and technology, but a good part of it is also attributable to record low tax rates and business friendly government policy. Meanwhile, tuition at the public university I attended has increased by 400% in the past 10 years.

I don't think anyone cares about rich people driving fancy cars. They can spend their money how they like. Additionally, I don't think we will ever get rid of poverty entirely. The implicit agreement that we have reached as a society is that as long as the government ensures equal opportunity and social mobility, we will tolerate a certain degree of wealth inequality. Unfortunately, that inequality is so extreme that it is negatively impacting opportunity and mobility.

A buddy of mine had a theory that the lack of acting and fashion industries (compared to LA and New York respectively) had a significant negative impact on the overall attractiveness and gender balance of the general SF population.

This is just for the pilot program. State law forbids the city from collecting more money than the estimated costs of the program.

And lets not forget SAS, Matlab/Octave, Julia, STATA, SPSS, etc... There are a ton of choices out there. While not currently in vogue, there are a lot of SAS/STATA/SPSS jobs out there. Generally it is bigger, more established companies that use these software/languages, but if your goal is to get into a more stats focused position, these languages can be a good choice to learn.

Hmm, seems like this could be useful for more than just books. I bought some camping gear from amazon, and I recall that my biggest hesitation was not being able to evaluate the physical product, and therefore unsure of the construction quality. The Amazon reviews help a lot, but I was still left with some uncertainty.

Realistically, the amazon income is much too small for a business to be viable. I think the commissions are around 5-10%, whereas the traditional retail markup is around 50%. Seems like there is too big of a gap there to make things work, even if using this business model resulted in lower storage and stocking costs for the retail outfit.

Probably more like ~20-30 charge-cycles per year, as it would only be used on really hot days where AC usage is high and peaker plants are needed to meet that demand.

In general, I try and make all of my purchases on one credit card, and only use my debit card for withdrawing cash at atm's. That way I only have to monitor one account for fraudulent activity. Where this breaks down, is a lot of the discount/cheaper gas stations will only accept cash or debit. Also, the magnetic stripe seems to wear down pretty fast on my cards, which means I often have to use my debit card when the credit card isn't swiping. I agree though, get a credit card (preferably with rewards, mine does 1% cash back) and use that for all of your purchases.

"If your social views include the view that life should be easy for everyone, ..."

That is a gross mis-characterization of the liberal worldview. The social contract in most modern capitalistic states is that we allow a winner-takes-all economic model as long as we ensure equal opportunity and social mobility. However, wealth and income inequality are at all time highs, and many people on the lower economic and social rungs are stuck in a poverty trap. This isn't about giving people a free lunch, it's about reforming the system to provide more opportunity to those in dire circumstances.

Regarding your craigslist exchange, you took advantage of someone's dire economic situation in order to improve your own. While not illegal, I would argue it is immoral, and this is happening on a much larger scale with Amazon. It is immoral to employ an individual for less than a living wage, regardless of what the market dictates should be the prevailing wage. It might not be Amazon's fault that poverty exists, and no one can blame them for exploiting it to their advantage, but they are benefiting enormously from our capitalistic economic system, and it is entirely reasonable to impose regulations and reforms on the winners in order to restore mobility and opportunity.

I think improving the efficiency and logistics of delivery services actually qualifies as 'an important thing'. It might not be as sexy as curing cancer or eliminating poverty, but it provides a service that allows individuals the opportunity to maximize their own productivity, which has both economic and quality of life impacts.

While this service isn't exactly revolutionary, it could put pressure on competitors to improve their customer experience. I think the end game (as does Amazon apparently) is sub-30 minute deliveries done using energy-efficient and autonomous technology, but that is a ways away, but at the very least, incremental improvements by upstarts will put pressure on the industry as a whole to improve their services (think about it, why doesn't Fedex/UPS already offer evening services to residential areas, they should have been doing this years ago).

Many of the subjects in the article had insurance. Even with the insurer negotiated discounts, the prices are still insane.

I was making some very large generalizations in my original comment for the sake of brevity and argument. Thank you for taking the time to pick them apart;)

> If you keep the structure of the US government but change the electoral system for the Congress to one which produces more proportional responses, you don't have the same degree of incentive for disproportionate concessions to a minor party to form an administration.

My original point was that the Tea Party has essentially shown that a more proportional system of government isn't any more functional or effective than a two party system. The Tea Party has essentially captured the Republican Party, not too dissimilar to how a minority party would make out-sized concessions of a coalition government in a parliamentary system. Both cases result in gridlock (or something that closely resembles it).

I am strongly in favor of basic income, primarily because I think technology is going to make it increasingly difficult for many individuals to find meaningful, high paying work. But even with sufficient basic income, people are going to forgo insurance and health care until it's too late, and as I mentioned in the previous post, this will have societal level effects.

I would agree that in a more ideal world, we could have free market health care. With enough technological progress, it might be possible to get accurate diagnoses of illnesses just by using an iphone app and then go to a pharmacy (or get drone delivery) to get a prescription for a cheap nano surgery pillbot. But we are way too far away from that, and there are way too many human lives on the line. I think it's okay to be militantly idealistic, but when human lives are at stake, I think it is necessary to cede to practicality.

That's not necessarily true. Proportional representation often has the undesirable side effect of dramatically increasing the power of small minority parties. The reason is that in order to gain majority control of the government larger parties often have to make significant concessions to a smaller minority party to get the votes. Also, you can end up with a lot of gridlock if no coalition can reach majority.

Two party systems have it's flaws, but what we are seeing now is more typical of a proportional system. Due to overly effective gerrymandering, the Republican hold on many congressional districts is so secure that the only real threat to those seats is from party extremists. Under our normal two party system with less polarized districts, extremist politicians couldn't win in general elections, but now that so many Republican districts are so secure, the party has essentially been captured by extremists (it's not a stretch to call the Tea Party a third party). In the past, the two party system worked by consensus, the more moderate members of each party would work together to carve out solutions to a problem, and keep in mind, the more moderate party members were typically from contested districts, so they needed to demonstrate leadership and good results to get re-elected. The end result was that the party that demonstrated the best leadership would get re-elected.

The Republican 'take no prisoners' strategy can probably be traced back to Gingrich. We are now seeing a culmination of that strategy, and I think most would agree that it has backfired. If I was in the business of making bold predictions, I think I would bet that the Republican party might get replaced by a new, more moderate party in the next 20 years. More realistically, they are going to shift back to the middle. Two party systems won't work otherwise, and our government isn't really designed to allow multiple parties.

If you need a certain drug to treat an illness and the drug company has a 20 year patent on that drug, how do you propose to get it for cheaper? If you need a rare but specialized surgery and there is only one or two surgeons in the country that can perform the operation, how exactly will you price shop? If you get in a horrible accident, will you go to 3 different ER's to check their prices first? Also who gets priority in the ER waiting room? The person who can pay the most or the person who is in most need? I went in to the ER a few years back for a broken nose. I got cut in line by a guy who got shot and two guys who got stabbed. My guess is none of them had insurance, but considering they could die from their untreated wounds, I did not complain.

One major oversight that you fail to address in you hypothetical free market scenario is that supply is still constrained. In a truly free market, anyone can set up shop and try to market and sell their services. If I buy a TV that craps out in two days, I either get it fixed by warranty or I go online and write a bad review which hopefully contributes to the demise of the company. If I get a bad surgery from a poorly trained doctor I die. That is why we have the FDA etc, and that is why doctors are rigorously vetted and trained through the med school/residency process, and I think most people would agree that that is a good thing.

Another issue I have is your mention of 'charity'. Almost anytime this gets used in a political/economic discussion, it is used to dismiss a whole class of problems that the author does not want to deal with in their argument. In this particular case you mention that if you cannot afford a 'free market' doctor/treatment, then you can turn to charity to provide the funds. Of course we all know that charity will never come close to providing for the entirety of society, so you are left with a situation where almost everyone except those who can afford treatment are forced to go without it. And of course the typical libertarian response is "tough luck" or "work harder". But here is the thing, health, similar to environmental issues has strong public effects. There are a number of diseases and illnesses that, if left untreated in a large portion of the population, can have devastating impacts on society. A healthy population is a necessity of a first world economy and relying on charity to ensure positive, society level outcomes is absurd and ignores reality.

Look, I lean libertarian on many issues, but there are certain aspects of society that are just not suited to a free market. I want to be able to go to a restaurant without being terrified of catching TB from the waiter or getting salmonella poisoning from the food. I don't want industrial companies polluting the ocean and rivers that I surf and fish in. The free market can be very powerful, but it is also fairly dumb, it cannot recognize when it is doing more collective harm than good. I don't see why so many libertarians think in terms of all or nothing. Compromise shouldn't be such a dirty word in today's political discussions, it's a sad state of affairs.