run4yourlives2

Do you really need GPS to tell the drone, "Remember your flight control inputs and reverse them on loss of signal?"

I'm sure it's not trivial, but drone defence based completely on signal interception seems straightforward to defeat.

Simply: It's more difficult to emigrate to the US as a foreigner in many key ways, coupled with the fact that it's a slightly larger city with a much stronger and more diversified economy.

As a Vancouverite (well, metro at least) who moved here from Toronto 15 years ago, one of the things that has bothered me most about BC and Vancouver specifically is how reliant the economy is on a few distinct sectors.

In BC, it's resources and literally nothing else. In Vancouver, since resources overall are declining, we run the economy via real estate investment. That's moronic.

As you say, we could become a tech hub easily if we leveraged our easy connection to Seattle and the gateway to Asia that we are. We could become a medical tech hub as well. We could be a centre for finance as well if we invested properly, particularly since oil is now on a downslide.

Our local governments simply have no vision. Our residents are too afraid of change to actually do, well anything really, and all our innovators simply move elsewhere.

You need to monetize this. Having the analytics of what is happening to your application would be a godsend to job seekers. It doesn't provide any real benefit, but I think people would pay for piece of mind.

Airspace is regulated federally in most countries, but what you can build on the ground is almost always local in regulation.

You might be allowed to fly overhead without he city being able to do much about it, but you won't be able to land or take off.

(And to be honest, if the city complains to the federal regulators regarding noise, they almost always listen - almost every airport in a town has strict noise-reducing approach patterns for this reason already.)

Actuarial Science is a hard science that is a few hundred years old, not a social construct that you can manipulate.

There is no desire to "show" anything beyond having an accurate representation of probability.

Actually, using actuarial science in that way is still very much open to debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actuarial_science#Actuaries_in...

"Discrimination" isn't when it is based on actuarial models. Most countries' court systems have already ruled on this.

Basically, I can charge a woman x% more for disability insurance because I can mathematically prove that women are statistically more likely to claim.

Pipistrel is trying: http://www.panthera-aircraft.com/technical-data

Yes, some licenses have poorly defined metrics that are hard to properly evaluate.

No, ensuring people that claim to understand a topic they are selling their advice on as a product actually know what they are talking about is not a worthless endeavor.

Should a Doctor have to spend a certain amount of time performing operations even if they nail their first one? Should a pilot need to fly 50 hours in a circle even if he got his landings down in the first 3? What if a person can pass a law school final the day after they take the LSAT? Should they be able just to skip law school completely and be admitted to the Bar? Clearly law school only exists to discourage employment!

I'm constantly amazed at how so many of the people that don't think time invested matters at all never have time invested themselves.

Sigh. Really? Is this really what is passing for high quality discussion here these days?

Occupational licensing is a form of consumer protection in almost EVERY case.

We have taxi licensing because at one point, people being extorted by being dropped off in bad areas in the middle of nowhere unless they paid massive amounts of cash to a driver was common. Hell, it still is in a lot of parts of the world where licensing isn't enforced.

When a single mother with her salon causes a staph outbreak in your Randian paradise of no regulations because she can't be bothered to wash her scissors properly, what then? How does that help the "lower income families" that now can't pay for the medical services they need because they couldn't afford an extra $10 for a proper haircut?

We have medical licensing because too many quacks called themselves healers and fostered bullshit on too many ignorant people. Same with legal licensing, real estate licensing, etc, etc.

Your assertions fall apart with a thirty second google search into the history of why we have enacted these things coupled with some basic common sense. Yes, certain reliance on regulation has been used to stifle competition by established players, no that does not mean all regulation is bad. Cons and scams are a real reality in the free market, and not everyone has the means to avoid them, or worse to recover from them when they are victims. Any just market will have sufficient barriers and safeguards in place to provide a reasonable protection to consumers to ensure those consumers actually use their money on new services and products instead of being scared into a position of paying much higher prices for services from entities they trust.

Licensing is an incubator of a stronger economy; it allows people to be mobile with their money because it creates a lower boundary of competence and expectation.

I hope that if I turn into what can best be described as a self righteous asshole, my children will be smart and capable enough to call me on it, hard and fast.

There are so many incredibly insulting and poorly thought out half-truths in the original presentation referenced that I'm shocked it was given in the context of a professional environment.

It's self reported data in general, not specific to this case:

http://www.sciencebrainwaves.com/the-dangers-of-self-report/

Just to let you know, most HR circles usually completely disregard self reported salary info because it has a tendency, (even when anonymously reported) to inflate the actual amounts.

This seems nice, but there's no way 6 guys in a hanger in Denver are going to build a viable supersonic passenger aircraft that meets FAA standards for mass passenger travel, is fuel efficient enough that tickets aren't $20K and somehow also turns a profit.

I know "never say never", but this is about as confident a statement I or anyone with 3 minutes of reading on the airline industry can make. Margins are razor thin as it is.

A much better option (IMO) would be to research a Citation/Learjet sized supersonic aircraft. If you think of the market, the rich would be much more comfortable leaving from a smaller/private terminal in their private jet, zipping to London in 4 hours, and then zipping back on their own time, than they would going through the main terminal and all that nonsense just to save 3 hours in the air. Hell, being in the air in first class is the best part of the entire trip!

These guys (No connection whatsoever) http://www.aerionsupersonic.com/ have been trying to do the latter for 13 years. Thirteen. They just got their first order.

Actually, we do restrict construction particularly in the "view corridor" that is downtown. It's not that we don't build buildings, it's that they are all under 40 stories, whereas a typical city of our size would have buildings of the same type pushing 100 stories easy.

For a sense of scale, here is Vancouver's tallest building compared to the world leaders: http://i.imgur.com/YcCozCE.png?1

Given the leaps of progress made between this series of games and the previous series in only a few months, I'd expect "never lose" will become a recognized reality in about a year.

I don't think he's saying " it is not wise to have someone specialize in it for you", he's saying that that isn't "good enough". Ergo, you need to have a solid fundamental understanding of how money is processed in a business as well, in addition to having specialists handle the things beyond your level of detail.

I'd argue how your business receives money, pays out money, and retains money is an essential component of being in business and therefore something anyone in charge of directing a business should know enough of.

As a CEO/President/sole proprietor, it's probably more important than the creation of whatever product it is you are selling, really.

Emigration != Citizenship.

People renouncing citizenship don't do so simply because they've made a life for themselves in Europe or somewhere similar (be it temporarily or semi-permanent or permanent). Being a dual citizen has many advantages. (Not the least of which is allowing the US constitution to actually apply to you as you enter the country)

People renounce their citizenship when retaining it becomes more effort than the benefit received. For instance, I'm dual Italian-Canadian, and I have no qualms about retaining my Italian passport indefinitely, even though my father was Italian and I only lived in the country for a year.

Now, should the Italian government decide they needed monthly bank statements from my Canadian accounts like the US does, making my life a nightmare of paperwork every year, I might reconsider.

It's too bad the data is "off" because the map is quite stunning.

To call friendly fire incidents, riots and explosions and such "battles" seems a little suspect. A "battle" should involve one or more belligerents of significant force (i.e., > 100) in an organized campaign. Smaller battles are routinely called "skirmishes" and shouldn't really even be recorded in this sense. Unorganized violence is simply unrest or rioting. And accidents are exactly that.

Also, I highly doubt China is a relative haven for peace given their history and population. There's clearly a lack of data there (or rather, they don't bother recording all of the other things that the creator has decided to add as "battles").

I question the overall motives of this. It's almost as if the creator wants the west to seem more violent than the rest of the planet. I don't think that's the reality. We're all just as bad.

1. Mortgage brokerages are not financial advice brokerages. A mortgage broker finds the best deal for the consumer, usually for products that are more or less the same.

2. A financial planner or investment advisory is about helping a client gauge what product works best for their particular situation, and being able to communicate the very real downsides of certain courses of action.

3. An insurance broker acts in a very similar way to #2, in that there are some very real concerns that may not be obvious to the layperson that the broker should be providing advice on. For example: what a health insurance product covers, and why (for example) not providing coverage for children in your female dominated company could result in very real losses to your employees, and by extension, you as a company.

>Put client's answers in brokerage program; Choose highest commission in top 10; Recommend product

..is PRECISELY the type of thing that licensing is designed to protect the consumer from.

Group health insurance is extremely complex, particularly in the US where it is really the ONLY health insurance a person has. These are people's lives we're talking about here...you can't wait until you HAVE cancer to find out that your plan doesn't cover it.

The only thing this entire thread is showing is exactly why not having licensed, knowledgeable professionals advising on insurance is a very real concern.

>I have no idea how complicated health insurance is in the US

Exactly.

At the centre of this scandal is a company selling insurance with unlicensed brokers.

That means people advising others on what insurance to buy where their health is concerned who didn't know what the hell they were doing.

The software made to skirt the licencing requirements is only a subset of the overall issue.

Frankly, I'm getting a little tired with the group of commentators on here that think its a-ok for a company like zenefits to tell people "Sure, you're covered for that in this policy" when they frankly have no idea if that is the case.

Selling insurance advice without a license is exactly like selling financial services advice without a license. And both actions are illegal for very good reasons.

That's not the law they broke, that's just a regulation that the insurance board is conducting an internal review of.

The law they broke was selling insurance without the use of unlicensed brokers.

This is a little simplistic. I won't argue that these regulations have morphed into things that are overall negative for the consumer, but the reason they where introduced in the first place is because you had instances of people actually being killed by unregulated nefarious actors. That is certainly negative for the consumer.

When people are asking politicians why Joe Doe was able to operate his "taxi" company that wouldn't stop his car outside of the ghetto without a $50 "oops, I got lost fee", it seems obvious why regulation is put in place.

That isn't to say that said regulation remains entirely useful, just that your argument isn't really bore out by the history.

The reason why zenefits is having issues is that the laws they broke are still entirely relevant to everyone involved.

Don't forget to factor in health care. In BC, standard care that would be the bargain basement cost would likely cost you < $1500 a year. Better care not much more than $2500 tops.

Reports are saying the CEO actually wrote the actual macro though.

Well, based on what I read elsewhere it seems like they didn't think licencing was that big of a deal at all really, which is an even larger demonstration of hubris than this.

I do feel bad for their employees who may end up being blacklisted from insurance period for practicing without a licence.

Let's just forget about the entire ethical argument around breaking an existing policy/legal condition of doing business, as important as that is wrt health insurance.

Who in their right mind thinks taking the time to design, then publish, a way to defeat a relatively straightforward education requirement is in any way a worthwhile thing to do? There is a level of ego there that goes beyond rational decision making: you aren't cheating the system for an advantage; you're cheating just because you can, because it makes you feel better than others. That's some borderline psychopathic behaviour really.

Did Zenefits employees really gain anything from not having to complete the required 52 hours? Was it really that big of an ordeal? Or was this a matter of just being smug about 'not needing' to do some very basic requirement they felt was beneath them? There is an element of hubris there that is unbecoming in and of itself.

These are (very minimal, really) licencing requirements. There is a minimal amount of effort that an employee should be expected to put in to do their job legally. The assumption is that exposure through time to the subject matter will increase knowledge. That may not be true in every situation, but it likely is in a majority; the rule exists. The exposure generated from choosing to "fight this battle" and losing is miles greater than any particular payoff achieved in victory. That alone indicates to me that the person in charge has a poor grasp of weighing risks/rewards, regardless of personal ethics.

Some things just aren't worth fighting because the risks in losing are so disproportional to any net gain from winning. This is a perfect example. A good CEO needs to know how to pick and choose the hills to fight on.

Lesson learned here: Not every component of your business needs to be disrupted. Some things aren't worth disrupting at all, really.