The Internet Archive has a pretty big lending library.
13,735 karma · joined September 19, 2017
Whatever works for you, of course. PDFs have bookmarks, which instantly take me to a specific spot on a specific page. Also, I can open multiple instances of the PDF, viewing multiple pages of the same book (or some PDF readers allow split screens to do the same thing). Edit: And if I don't recall where something is, I can search for it.
Mexico’s government is bullish about prospects for the rail crossing, which will offer proximity to the US and a transit time of 6.5 hours excluding loading time — less than the eight to 10 hours it takes on the 80km canal.
Much more than transit time, I'm interested in throughput. How long does it take to move a full container ship's contents from one end to the other? How long does it take just to unload and load?
Also, regarding loading/unloading: When I think of a train, I imagine it being loaded/unloaded in semi-serial - first the front cars, then the next set of cars, as the train moves segment-by-segment past the ship. Essentially you are transforming a massive pile of containers onto a long string of containers. Is that correct? Is there any solution to speed it up? I suppose they could lay several train tracks in parallel alongside the ship and use extra train engines to pull up groups of rail cars, and then reconnect them into one long train as the train pulls out. How long is a train carrying a full container ship's capacity?
Cost seems the other essential question: Sea transport costs a fraction of rail transport, generally, but I expect that canal transport is far more expensive than open sea transport.
[0] https://www.ft.com/content/bbe8e851-e9f2-4ed1-a4a7-051a670b4...
https://www.ft.com/content/bbe8e851-e9f2-4ed1-a4a7-051a670b4...
> At a certain point we're automating new tasks faster than humans can learn them.
That assumes the pace of automation is increasing, but similar concerns have been around for a long time, going back to the industrial revolution. Read Dickens or HG Wells (though a specific cite doesn't come to mind), or look at the 1927 silent film, Metropolis.
But right now businesses can't find enough employees.
> Say it takes 1 year to train a human in something, and 1 year for a robot/AI. well it might take 1 year for the first AI, but copying software is easy. Training the next person takes another year. Even if it's parallelized and you save some time, the cost of training the marginal additional person is was larger.
That's how automation works. Then the people go on to the higher skilled jobs that the machines can't do, including designing, manufacturing, operating, and servicing the machines. Cars made the entire horse industry redundant; calculators and computers put lots of human calculators out of work.
Yet today, with a much larger population, employers can't find enough workers.
If things like that didn't happen, then productivity wouldn't increase and we would be able to afford more shelter, food, healthcare, education, etc.
How do the cities identify this evil criminal? (The jokes write themselves.)
> cities dominated by the idea the homeless are helpless victims who can do no wrong where you see needles and feces, like SF.
Hmm .. the goalposts shift. What cities do you mean and what specific policies?
There are many tropes to unpack, including that IQ is somehow fixed and people's fate, and that even the "average" person "can't learn something". Also, it of course glorifies and cements the power of the wealthy who think they are smart and very special and deserving of everything.
Also, history has shown that people overwhelmingly that people can learn higher skilled jobs en masse. Just look at universal literacy - did anyone say, 'the average person can't learn to read'.
The US has long believed that anyone can achieve and succeed with hard work. That's been my experience, but that the limit is almost always in opportunity.
Or it allowed the employee to shift to more valuable, interesting work rather than menial tasks that could easily be done by a computer.
There's an organization called NASA working on it.
You might look up what economics has to say; this issue is well-addressed there. Some fundamentals:
The comment above assumes a static marketplace - the same technology, needs, etc. - and one that addresses the entirety of economic demand, rather than a dynamic market where those things change and resources are scarce (thus when resources become available, they are applied to other unfilled needs).
For example, which skills are in demand changes but there is still growing demand: If you look at the jobs performed 100 years ago, you'll see that most of them are no long needed. Yet not only are most people employed today, we have ~3-4x as many people - most of the jobs disappeared, yet, 3-4x people have jobs.
And yes, a growing economy requires higher-skilled work, but that's good because that work comes with higher pay.
I've seen many, many campsites of unhoused people. Like housed people's domiciles and yards, some are neat, some are messier. I don't see many specific problems.
I think the parent comment's characterization is a myth, in part because it maps so neatly to the common prejudices of people who are unfamiliar with unhoused people - especially that they are somehow so horrifyingly filthy, to the point of being subhuman, an object of their outrage - and not with the reality of it, including the real problems.
> feces
That's a red flag for me. People commonly play it as a trump card against unhoused people - again, that subhumanity and outrage. It clearly is chosen to press that emotional button, to bypass the listener's reason and compassion. We are probably well-evolved to have a disgust reaction to feces.
I've never seen it; I'm not sure how people so afraid of unhoused people have seen it so much. And how the heck did you know if it's from a dog or a person? What are the distinguishing characteristics? Did you examine it closely? I've seen city officials report it, but in limited experience: I've passed by encampments that were clean and neat, and then soon after read in the news that the city cleared the encampment due to the old 'feces and needles'. The reporting never checks the facts.
By far the feces I see most in regard to unhoused people is bull feces in textual form. That's easier to recognize!
I've read about that happening many times. People need rights, not depend on the goodwill of local government and hope; that's why we have a Constitution with limited government and don't depend on the goodwill of a monarch. You wouldn't accept that for your home - they can kick you out any time, but why would they?
Losing your parking spot is a minor commercial inconvenience to someone with (I assume) other resources; losing their campsite, especially without alternatives, costs an unhoused person their home and their shelter from the elements.
I'm not even sure what we're discussing - these people need shelter and homes, of course. Park regulations are secondary.
Not all unhoused people litter. One person is not guilty of or responsible for what someone else does. You are not responsible for what I do and vice-versa.
We seem to forget these days that we (very thankfully) have rights and live in a free country that recognizes them. People are free individuals, at liberty to do as they please unless there is some strong reason to stop them that is also constitutional, lawful, and follows due process. 'I don't like them' and 'they look/smell/talk funny' aren't sufficient reasons.
I don't see how local government has the authority to remove someone from public space except in very limited circumstances. Public space is not the property of local government. You have a right to do what you want there.
I'm pretty sure that's a requirement for starting research, to have a hypothesis.
Look at the vast amount of fraud, theft, slander, cons, mis/disinformation, etc. on the Internet, not to mention consumers and small businesses getting run over by legal corporate behavior such as not providing customer service, locking accounts, holding money, holding data, surveillance and selling data, etc.
It's been said before, but IT needs professional standards that provide actual, real-life security, privacy, etc., just like professional standards for building developers provide actual, safe buildings - imagine a fraud equivalent to cryptocurrency in building architecture and engineering; imagine an SBF. SBF was celebrated and still is by some. Lawyers have professional standards, doctors, accountants, scientists, engineers in most fields, ... the list goes on in every field of human endeavor but IT.
And with standards comes liability. Microsoft shouldn't be able to just say, 'sorry about those hackers'.
But you are probably a much less appealing target. Also, you might be willing to lock it down more than Microsoft, which has to please all those millions of customers and wants to admin it at the lowest cost possible - including possibly minimizing support calls by using permissive settings - and not with the most security possible.
The evidence is a strong negative correlation between bias and achievement: Extraordinary achievements so disproportionately achieved by people in groups that are not the target of bias. Look at top government officials, SV leaders, Nobel Prize winners, etc etc - mostly white males.
The biggest targets of bias in the US, for example - probably women and black people - genrerally get the worst results (in areas where there is discrimination). By contrast, as an example wherever black people aren't subject to bias, such as certain forms of music and certain sports, achievement is extraordinary. Imagine all that talent and drive in other fields.