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It's been in that state for many years at this point.

The refrain of shitty developers everywhere.

Google more than any other organization on the planet has bought at least some of its own bullshit. For at least 6-7 years they've been consistently, 100% sure that generally-useful AI (or something sufficiently approximately close) is just a few short years away, and thus any investment in anything else (like people) would be wasted.

They've sacrificed countless customers, products and services on this altar, and will continue to do so probably indefinitely. They've decided they're going to live or die by the AI. Humans work there only to build, configure and maintain the machine. Every time I hear someone say "Google really needs to hire some <people>" or "Google needs to train their <people>" better I shake my head - it's like saying Ford should solve an efficiency problem with their cars by building boats.

Google is not going to do that, ever, and Google is not going to learn humility either. They're convinced they have it figured out, reality be damned.

I often wonder what the comments on various sites looked like the day before the 2008 crash. Or the dot com bust. It seems for every highly voted analysis of how vulnerable we are there's a highly voted comment pooh-poohing it.

You underestimate how many levels of engineering at Google are entirely populated by recent college grads. It could absolutely be unwillingness (I agree it's probably not blind ignorance) to pay attention to the lessons of the past.

I'm going to guess your unspoken assertion is that these things would have happened anyway - or even faster, natch! - had the government not gotten involved and mandated ever-stricter safety requirements. I do not agree.

> There is no economic rationale for the government to tell airlines what extras they can and cannot charge for,

If only the world was populated by dollar bills instead of human beings this would all be so easy.

I eagerly await a comment section full of armchair economists and recent college grads explaining how the free market will fix all of this and how the problem is things just need to be more fre-er and market-er. How it's just that it's not a TRUE free market, and if it was all of this would sort itself out.

The problem is we have decades of real world experience and data to draw from and it does not make the free market position compelling. In fact if we take ideology out of the equation it's pretty obvious most of the recommendations in the article are absolutely reasonable (unless you think the invisible hand solves all).

You're certainly a busy bee, posting this repeatedly in this thread. Almost like you have an agenda.

That'd be super chilling if the various legislative bodies didn't act as a check on that through confirmation requirements and limits on executive authority.

You know, like Turkey used to have. Before yesterday.

What you call "hell" I call record profits. Sorry if you're trying the tired old "the best way to lose millions is to buy an airline" bullshit this probably not the thread to do it in.

And how much less than their private sector counterparts did they make over the course of their career?

The counter argument would be that we learned many decades ago the societal consequences of employment that does not cover basic needs. We can't pretend a human can survive in many parts of America on that kind of wage without government assistance. So we either pay it for the Uber rides, or we pay it in social welfare, or we pay it in the consequences of insufficient social welfare. You're just complaining that it's Uber riders who would have to pay for the externalities caused by Uber's business practices.

Is the US even manufacturing non-military firearms at a rate sufficient for 2k/day to slip out through smuggling? That seems extraordinarily unlikely.

And the whole thing is effectively structured as a 4th amendment sidestepping initiative. Which is why it will never go away.

That's a tacky and pointless comment.

Honestly I think appeals to emotion like this have no place in dispassionate conversations about international espionage.

Companies like google are obsessed with diversity. The idea that they'd systematically pay women less is laughable - you will not find more liberal environments outside of academia.

I can't help but wonder if this is politically motivated.

Whataboutism is basically the currency of debate on the internet these days. For whatever reason it's the arguing style de jure.

I disagree completely. Just what do you think the people you interact with every day are like when you don't see them? This is puritanism, nothing else.

These luxury towers are shitholes. They're run like hotels, the property managers are complete pricks, and things are broken constantly. I don't know why anyone would think quick-build apartments from cheap developers would be luxury anything but I guess people are easily fooled these days.

Because that's the craziest fucking thing you've heard this year?

Yes, surely that's the reason.

Right, so we're just arbitrarily moving the goalposts now that the data doesn't back the claim. Got it.

The daily HN dose of anti-car hysteria is here right on schedule. I can't help but think there's some deep-pocketed companies making sure that "autonomous cars are our only future!" and "there's no point in trying to get the government to spend money on roads!" are the standard refrains on this and other sites frequented by millenials.

Be careful staring into the abyss.

Because nobody likes to pay for something they don't want? No, incremental cost is not zero, or there'd be infinite channels.

We should remember the only reason in many states buying a car is a transparent process is because the government realized this kind of billig/invoicing is exploitative and unfair. Almost every argument applied to the "one page" car buying rules apply to cell phones, medical treatment, you name it.

This has always stuck with me. When I was a lot younger, in the early 90s I was dating a guy who was pretty high up in Washington state's DSHS. I remember him saying that massive cutbacks were forcing all the institutions they had left to close. I asked him naively what the plan was for everyone who was going to be released and he said "Nothing. There is no plan. There're just going to live on the streets."

I was aghast and assumed he had to be wrong somehow. Fast forward ten years and downtown Seattle is full of homeless people. Fast forward to today and multiple cities are basically overrun with them, when the population of them was tiny just 20 years ago.

I hate feeling old and partisan but my personal experience leads me to believe this is the crazy GOP policies of the 80s coming home to roost. It's certainly the most likely explanation given what I know and doesn't require some of the mental backflips necessary for other explanations.

That's basically like saying that horses and buggies will just be tools in a larger toolset needed for space travel. What generalized AI will look like bears little or no resemblance to what we're doing today.