anon4this1

Does anyone else think that underground tunnels are a superior way to solve the last few miles problem? Tunnels about 1 foot in diameter with little wheeled vehicles pushing around payloads of takeaway food, groceries , parcels at reasonable speed with control computers determining routing and stopping collisions. A functioning network of this type would be more valuable than power or cable utility networks, and horizontal tunnel drilling tech means that you dont have to dig up huge swathes of road to put tunnels in.

From experience, a blood sample which has been milked out of a finger is quite different to a venous blood sample.

(I am an anaestheologist and often perform or ask nurses to perform post-op point of care pinprick blood counts to look for anaemia in patients who have had big surgeries. We do 2 readings to check for error, and I often find that samples which have been squeezed out have a haemoglobin value 10-20% different to those which are drawn from a vein due to expression of tissue fluid.)

Assuming that the ability to upload our entire brain to a computer will not be available during out current lifetime, what about the idea of mass data collection of our experiences, storage of this data, then periodically run improving algorithms that combine all our experiences into a consciousness?

This would maybe involve wearing a camera 24/7 to record everything we see and hear, and also some feedback on our own inner thoughts and our own recording of our emotional responses to things. When we finally die, a computer crunches all this data using neural networks to create a consciousness based on our life experiences and emotional responses.

This would initially be maybe not fantastic, but as technology progresses the crunching of the source data improves and every decade a new iteration of our consciousness can be produced, hopefully coming closer and closer to the real us.

Haha.. anaesthesiology resident here.. currently alt-tabbing to anki where I am adding flashcards for my final exam.

As for medical school/medicine for the OP... it is kinda the antithesis of the startup scene.. seniority and experience trumps youth and creativity always. Rote learning vast amounts of information gets the accolades. Trying anything a bit different or innovative might get you the reputation of being a cowboy.

You are constantly in high demand and short supply, and you begin to resent being so 'needed' all the time..

It is well established, but plagued by issues relating to centralisation - exit scammers, law enforcement infiltrating markets, people stealing bitcoins. Each time this happens, growth is damped as buyers and sellers shuffle over to new operators. OpenBazaar would revolutionize this.

If openbazaar succeeds in creating a robust decentralised platform for trade, the portion of black market transactions done in bitcoin will grow significantly, and anyone holding bitcoin (eg. a16z) will get big returns.

None of these - just decrease the 20-30% margin charged by uber to as little as possible.

> How are you going to fund this? I have about 2 million in the bank

> Where is there source code available for a ride sharing app? How much is it going to cost? http://www.taximobility.com/ - i was quoted $15k

> How many developers will you hire? Planning to do the work myself. Once the app I'm buying is tweaked and running smoothly there shouldn't be too much to do.

> How many customer service representatives will you hire? None - the app will just link riders to drivers, and they will take care of customer service. Bad drivers will get banned from the service.

> How much is insurance to cover the drivers going to cost I've seen quotes for about 2x normal car insurance rates. drivers will pay this on their own.

> why would I take your service instead of Uber/Lyft? Drivers will have multiple apps installed, mine will give the biggest payout due to having the smallest margin. Drivers may even encourage customers to download my app, in order to maximise their pay. riders do it because of a sense of social justice, and wanting to pay their drivers rather than paying a san fran corporation.

If the govt offers subsidies/handouts/contracts, then you take them. It is simply good business, whether you need them or not.

Luck?

You can become a millionaire or even a billionaire by luck.

Risking an entire 9 figure fortune in order to run both 1) a business that most at the time thought was impossible (mass produced electric cars) 2) a space company that most at the time thought was impossible to do without being a nation state

and managing to against the odds make both of them succeed and become 11 figure companies is not luck. it is immeasurable slog, vision and competence.

there are tens of thousands of people worth hundreds of millions and ~1500 billionaires on earth, can you name a single one taking anything like the risks and producing the results elon is producing?

anaesthesiologist here..

agree that this machine is probably safe for giving sedation. colonoscopies inhabit a grey area where you can do them with benzodiazepine sedation but they are better with propofol, the only issue being with propofol is you have to be on the ball to titrate the infusion as things progress. A machine is quite capable of doing this.

for surgery requiring full general anaesthesia you do need someone immediately on hand (doctor or nurse-anaesthetist) who is an airway specialist because if you lose your airway you generally don't have long to re-establish it before the patient dies.

I'm not disputing the role of environmental factors, I'm just questioning how the potential role of genetics has been diminished in this study without justification.

Also, from your link the only study with ability to isolate causation (the adopted korean study) found "23 percent of educational attainment is determined by environment, implying that up to 77 percent is determined by nature.".

because in the brainwashed world of academia (and especially psychology) this is the more politically correct explanation, which is more likely to get published, get funding grants, get admiration from departmental peers, get media attention, avoid embarrassment for your self/your family/your department/your institution.

James Watson won a nobel prize for elucidating the structure of DNA and was still only 2 non-PC comments away from becoming a pariah.

stupid question, in table http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/BF-AJ529A_11txr_16... it states that the share of income tax paid by the bottom 20% is "-2.2%" - how do these people pay a negative tax rate?

bla bla bla..

basically every centralised entity arising from bitcoin/the blockchain has crapped out/been a waste of money. pointless altcoins, asic mining cos, bitcoin stocks, all the rest.

core, real, bitcoin itself remains a fantastic investment with massive upside, and will continue to be an incredibly useful in particular areas (darknet drugs etc)

All the corruption on the peripheries is expected and irrelevant. long live bitcoin.

Ok imagine next time you buy flights or concert tickets, instead of invariably paying some $6 credit card surcharge per booking, you are offered the option of booking with bitcoin for a $2 or even no surcharge. I will definately at that stage start looking at paying with bitcoin.

Then as a significant proportion of the population (say 20%) starts paying with bitcoin, other online shops like amazon will start seeing that they are saving a LOT by not paying 2% interchange fees to cover bullshit credit card reward programs and fees. And then the number of stores charging an additional credit card levy will increase as shops are not automatically building the credit card fee into the price, and then the number of people being pushed into bitcoin will increase.

The only thing that can stop this is credit card companies effectively lobbying that shops cannot charge more for credit card payments. this has happened historically in some juristictions, but is really pretty hard to justify for any sane reason so will be unlikely to stick.

This will either really marginalise credit card companies significantly, or really force them to put the screws on their interchange fees (and greatly reduce their rewards programs).

I sold $800k US of bitcoin on bitstamp market earlier this year - i did it over 30 minutes and it dropped the spot price about $6