244 karma · joined October 3, 2011
Post-9/11, the cabin door is now shut and locked during most of the flight. I can't imagine a pilot or crew-member would open that door due to a terrorist threat, knowing what we do now (and that they would probably die anyway, if they opened the door)
You could have made the same argument before the industrial revolution, or massive improvements in communications and the internet, but I think we've been better off as a result. of those improvements. People have much better access to information/education and have a wider platform for free speech, as well as being able to live longer.
Hopefully you find writing software more meaningful and enjoyable than the much harder labor jobs that was more common 100 years ago. It could be that an automation revolution, could better enable you to better financially support yourself in those things that you really like to do, and that are harder to automate, since those may become much more valuable in a more automated economy. (Just as music, writing and cooking are arguably more financially viable occupations for more people today than it was 100 years ago)
That being said, the smart financial decision, in your position, might be to relocate to a different city with significantly cheaper housing, education, food, etc. That has the social/emotional downside of not being as near to friends, family or the things that you like in your city, which may not be it worth it to you.
If a lot of people want to live in a certain area, and there is limited space to construct housing (or laws that prohibit new construction) its hard to see how prices would be able to stay low.
What do you think the best solution to this problem would be? In my mind, the biggest problem is that we have laws that favor bigger companies and richer people and provider an unfair advantage to those people. (some big companies pay no income tax for example, where that's not an option for a smaller businesses, or small businesses or poorer people can't defend themselves in civil cases due to excessive legal costs)
I don't think your notion of transferring wealth from workers to the owners of capital holds much weight in the context of a sharing economy either. It seems to me that a sharing economy is simply a more decentralized way of doing business, in which individuals are leasing their property or providing their services more directly to consumers than before. A centralized economy still provides wealth from workers to the owners of capital (rental car companies, hotels, taxi medallions, etc), perhaps more so than a sharing economy does.
The author seems to be under the impression that prior to the sharing economy, there weren't middle men still taking a cut for providing vehicles, leasing (or subletting) apartments or providing other services/assets that were needed to do a business. The question would be whether Uber, Zipcar, Etsy, etc are taking any more of a cut than a a more traditional taxi medallion, a car dealership, an art gallery, etc. I suspect they are taking less, since they are transferring a lot of the risk of owning the property and running a business to their contractors.
I don't think owning things in general creates wealth. Making smart financial decisions does. If you own a car and are paying a good amount of money to park, insure, maintain and purchase/lease that vehicle and don't drive it enough to justify that expense., it may make a lot more financial sense to use Zipcar, Uber and other public transportation. Similarly it may make sense to invest in owning enough kitchen supplies to prepare your own food instead of eating out all the time (or it may not, it just depends on your situation)
Also doesn't the reasonable suspicion have to be specific to the length of detention or the breadth of the search? Being stopped by police so they can verify your appearance, see if there is any obvious evidence of involvement (such as blood) or ask any nearby witnesses if they saw you committing a crime should require, in my thinking a lower threshold of suspicion than if they are handcuffing, arresting, detaining and bringing you into a police station for a lineup. (Just in the same way that doing a search for drugs in someone's car doesn't mean that the police can also search that person's house).
As for the person holding the knife and being shot. I am of the opinion that the person should be posing a clear threat to police to justify such excessive force. The police should avoid escalating the situation and should take a defensive stance, if at all possible, to see if the situation can be handled with less force.
I don't think the waiter/cop is a good comparison. You might have a better comparison with a personal body guard, but I don't see someone serving you food and someone who puts themselves in harms way for your safety at the same level, even if they are both being paid for it.
For me, trust is better established and progress happens when both parties try to work together and move forward in good faith. I don't think a "I won't respect you until you respect me" attitude will get us anywhere.
Not sure that the design for this page went through any sort of approval process though :)
That's a horrible url. Why not use something like http://amazon.com/news/free-prime-same-day-delivery? Is there some significant advantage to identifying the page with non-human readable identifiers in the query string that I'm not aware of?
Otherwise, very cool. I just wish it was in more areas.
The circumstances of your environment definitely make a difference in whether a reasonable person would be suspicious of the activity (even if you are unaware of those circumstances). If someone is lying dead in the street and a man was running away from the scene of the crime carrying a knife, a reasonable person would be be suspicious and not be thinking "Maybe he's got some hunting he's anxious to get to". (even if that's a plausible or even probable explanation)
Suspicion doesn't have the same requirements as guilt, which police officers should not be determining. You shouldn't be able to treat someone as if they are guilty, simply because you suspect them of a crime. Reasonable suspicion does give police license to investigate further and detain and do searches when necessary. (and we should definitely hold police officers accountable when they detain or search someone without reasonable suspicion)
As for the comment about showing respect, I think that sort of mindset will just escalate and make the problem worse. Lets demand respect for our rights and accountability in law enforcement, but lets not insult other people's intelligence and assume the worst, especially in broad ways that assume that all cops (or all cops in a certain city or area) are stupid, incompetent or evil.
I completely agree that police have to justify their suspicions and subsequent actions (searches, arrests and other actions), but saying that we, as citizens, should be okay engaging in suspicious behavior, just seems wrong.
We should hold those in law enforcement accountable for their actions and the exercise of the authority given to them, but we should also respect what they do and not make their job unnecessarily harder than it needs to be.
Instead of running away, the more correct approach would be to refuse to be detained for questioning unless the police have reasonable suspicion that you have done the crime and to retain legal counsel, if needed. You can calmly stand up for your rights without acting rashly and invoking suspicion.
Instead of addressing problems in a way that would be most effective for the individual and society, we are so afraid of having "bad" people on the streets, that we lock them away, sometimes for years, without a lot of evidence that we are doing any good (in fact, there is evidence that once someone enters the prison system, they are likely to commit crime once released)
On the political side, we are unnecessarily removing transparency from the government and sacrificing constitutional rights in the name of protecting ourselves from terrorists and people involved with criminal activity. The potential for abuse with this type of action is huge, especially if you get the wrong people in power.
I don't think we'll fix these sort of problems until we change our mindset and get money out of politics.
Browsers (especially mobile browsers) are unnecessarily limiting what can be done on the web. Adding additional permissions could enable browsers access to more system resources and components, especially on mobile.
Could you provide some examples of applications that don't require a lot of data that couldn't be run in a web-based environment, because of physical (and not current browser or software) limitations?
- For planes, there were 4,394 near-misses in 2012 [1]
- There were an estimated 5,419,000 automobile accidents in 2010, just in the US, resulting in 32,999 deaths [2]
- And the recent Amtrak train derailment, which could have been prevented (although why the prevention mechanism needs to be in the track, and not on the train itself seems strange). [3] There is also an estimated 2,280 collisions at public/private crossings resulting in 267 deaths in 2014. [4]
The question in my mind is whether the proposed Hyperloop system would be more prone to accident than our current systems of transit. I doubt our current means of transit would fare well under some of the proposed scenarios in the comments.
[1] - http://news.discovery.com/tech/airplane-near-misses-how-ofte...
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_motor_vehicle_deaths_in...
[3] - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/13/derailed-amtrak-tra...
- Distribution is easier and doesn't require approval from a third party (such as app stores), providing less of a barrier to entry and more freedom to create what you want to.
- It can be easier to develop and you may not have to provide support for multiple versions of your app (because you can easily ensure that everyone is running the latest codebase).
- Common components/libraries that would be used across different applications can be part of the browser itself or cached for one app and re-used for other applications, instead of having to be packaged into a downloadable runtime application.
- Depending on your application, creating a cross-platform product may be easier and require less development and have built-in functionality like copy-paste and other functionality provided by the browser (history, bookmarking, etc).
- The user and other people have more power to use your application in more flexible ways (due to browser plugins), and the content can be crawled and made searchable/discoverable by a variety of companies.
- The hyper-linking built into the web offers easy, cross-site (and application) integration that may be difficult to accomplish in a native app. In fact, you may be limited to a certain application provided by the operating system (like a particular map provider on mobile)
Lets not try to limit the web, but try to make it better and then let the users decide which they would prefer to use.
The main workflow of a web browser (urls and browser history), don't seem any more restricting than having to use an app store to download an app or using the home screen to launch an app. (I would argue that they are, in fact, less restricting). The restrictions are a factor of the operating system, not a inherit restriction of a web-based workflow.
There's no reason that mobile browsers couldn't expose more internal access to components or controls (and UI options) that are currently only available to native apps.
Do we really want to be restricted to a environment where if we want to release an update to our app, we have to submit the update to the third party for approval? (which can take days) and where users have to download your app to try it out?
We shouldn't concede defeat. We should demand more from mobile web browsers.
You could also probably greatly simplify the tax code, which has become a form of welfare with the poor paying less and the richer paying more relative to the amount they earn.
Then there's other potential benefits or reductions in cost, that are harder to quantify and predict. Would there be a reduction in crime? (which could reduce police costs) A decrease in sickness and health costs? (due to increased nutrition and better shelter) An increase in productivity and a boost to the economy? (due to people being in better health, being able to get more education and a tax code and welfare system that doesn't incentivize making less) What about all the non-profit organizations that spend millions helping the unfortunate? (What could that be spent on instead?)
I'm not necessarily in favor of a basic income to the extent mentioned in the article. I do wonder, however, if some limited basic income could be more effective than our current programs designed to help the poor and needy and if it would provide some better stability in people's lives generally. Either way, it would have a broader impact on the economy than simply removing welfare programs from federal and state budgets.
Personally, I think I would favor providing something like food through a system like food stamps first. It provides less risk of the money being wasted on addictions (drugs, gambling and other bad financial decisions) and better ensures the money is used to help someone (especially in the case of children, where they are not spending the money, but their parents are).
I think helping eliminate hunger (especially for children), is a good place to start, without having to make a massive change in how government is run without knowing how it will effect the economy.
That seems like a less risky change than trying to provide enough income to cover housing, utilities, clothing, etc. all at once.
Is there some sort of complementary process that could use the heat generated by the data center at the site itself? (energy production, manufacturing, etc)
Some quick googling shows results of what appears to be private organizations solely focused on providing assistance to african americans or people of african descent. [2]
[1] - https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarsh... [2] http://www.diversitybestpractices.com/news-articles/20-afric...
If a person is in the same circumstances, economic or otherwise, as another person, why should I only give aid to one of those people based on their race? How would restricting a scholarship to white students be less racist than restricting a scholarship to african-american students?