oneJob

Finally! An opportunity to say something positive about representative democracies! The opportunities to do so are rather meager these days, it seems, what with all the talk about their failings and lackings, especially when compared to direct democracy, which is becoming more and more possible every day. This is a tailor made case for representative democracy.

To all the comments speaking to the shortcomings of their legislators and how those shortcomings translate to suboptimal or even outright harmful laws, please consider two other options. Direct democracy and laissez-faire /libertarianism /anarchy.

First, consider direct democracy. By opening the legislative process to every eligible citizen, there is little chance the voting base will become more knowledgeable as to the issues of technology it will be voting on. It will in all probability become less knowledgeable, on par. Direct democracy increases the cognitive load on the legislator by orders of magnitude. By not having professional legislators each citizen must become, in addition to already being a productive member of the work force keeping their skills sharp and keeping abreast of advancements in their field, being a responsible, good member of their social circles, oh, and having a personal life, they must now both make decisions as to when they should devote resources to their legislative duties, given there will always be something up for vote, they must also devote resources deciding how they will vote. So, direct democracy not only creates a larger pool of non expert technology legislators but it also creates a framework in which those new legislators are less capable to devote the appropriate resources to legislate effectively.

Now consider the laissez-faire case. This one is easy, and for a contemporary case study one just needs to look at the recently drafted TPP language on restrictions on States regarding OSS. Laissez-faire simply settles in whatever state is conducive to the capabilities and sensibilities of the most fit entity given the initial state of the environment and its constituents. If the environment is most conducive to an entity which is benevolent and intelligent, awesome. If it is conducive to the successful outcome of a self interested, profit motive driven entity, awesome or not, that is the outcome in that case. It is amoral. No judgement. Just outcome.

The case for representative democracy then follows rather nicely, for once. Representative democracy creates a specialized space for crafting legislation where the citizens concerned about a given piece of legislation can appeal to the legislators to devote more resources to that particular issue, over other issues. Additionally they can provide additional resources to the legislators on a case by case basis to help them legislate, which may come in the form of financial assistance, access to relevant case or field studies, or experts in the domain. The non legislative citizens can then still go on about their lives, and the legislators can craft better quality legislation. Lobbying would be a form of this activity, but one in which the non legislative party is already decided as to how the legislation should look in its finished form, rather than simply trying to inform better legislation.

Two other benefits of representative democracy. The process inserts safety-switches in the form of, for example, checks and balances (only possible when the legislature is split in to different bodies, does not work when the whole legisture is involved in every part of the process), vetoes and recalls (same thing here), or the formalized process itself, which might require drafting, review, certification, or cooling-off/reflection periods.

All of which I mention to say that, sure, our "legislators" proper have had some pretty dumb moments recently while discharging their duties, but let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. They are only a small part of our law making apparatus. Lobbyists have certainly been providing their full energy. The process itself, while never perfect, has certainly done well for its constituents over an extended historical period, especially compared to other experiments; part of the beauty of the currently implemented process is its ability to improve and broaden the scope of its constituency, which should certainly continue. And there are some examples of grass roots activity influencing the dialogue and end-product.

As technology experts, throwing our support and resources behind the entire process, in a holistic fashion, providing expertise, opening up operations to legislators and citizens so they can familiarize themselves with often mysterious domains, providing a forumn for dialogues surrounding the issues, etc, this, to me at least, seems like a promising way forward, as opposed to withdrawing from the process all together and assuming everthing will sort itself out to one's personal liking. Not every issue will be settled in a manner that will satisfy each citizen every time. But that is the trade off one makes for being part of a larger community which shares most, but not necessarily each of their interests and priorities with the other members of their community. On balance though, we should all be better off if everyone engages and basic rights are respected.

So, yeah, call you Senator or Representative today. :)

Your instincts are correct: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/08/plutocrats-rise...

"Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich by Chrystia Freeland – review

A necessary and at times depressing book about the staggeringly wealthy"

Some states are beginning to throw their support behind OSS. It seems the "nation-state" has been "soon to be irrelevant" for a while now, but until "soon" arrives, the State is still a primary actor with immense resources and influence. So saying, "these are rules for States" as a way to minmize the importance of this section of the TPP does not make sense to me. At all. It frankly sounds like crazy talk. Sorry, but is does. As software becomes more pervasive and goods and services are delivered by or composed of software more and more, software will take on attributes once associated soley with "real property" and "free speech". As that happens, legal language like this limiting the State's ability, in any way, to legislate software will limit the State's population from having a say over how software should be treated in that population, in that society, in that community.

If the TPP does not impose the same restrictions on contracts between private parties, that is not a benign thing. Private parties includes corporations, and most contests between legal corporations and "individual natural persons" eventually are settled in the interest of the party with more resources, often the legal corporation. Such challenges may play out in the markets or the courts, or it may play out over an even longer period in the legislature by changing the laws regulating or guiding the markets and courts. Thus, hamstringing the State's ability to have laws counter to this section of the TPP actually saves an entity the time and money which might otherwise have been needed to lobby a State's legislative bodies or develop the legal framework by way of a legal process. It fixes the playing field in favor of non State actors. Currently the most powerful non State actors are for profit corporations and privately held companies. This section of the TPP is not at all neutral, if understood to apply only to States. It would then heavily favor corporations and companies, and it would limit State actors and thus their populations. It would favor entities driven by profit motive or the motives of whomever the individuals are that own said private companies. That. Is. Huge. That is a fundamental shift in how, say someone like an American like me, many people might want to govern the communities they are a part of.

Chapel Programming Language? By which I mean, Chapel seems like a great project to through support behind to add these feature sets. It is already very capable, had a good amount of resources, a roadmap, and seems that it would lend itself to this.

So if someone starts following me on the street and gets close enough to put their hand in one of my pockets and just continues on that way every morning I leave my house, for weeks or longer, I don't say, "Hey stranger, I'd like to make an argument why you should afford me some privacy tomorrow." I'd likely say, "Wtf person, you're being the kind of weird that gets the police called on people. Step back. Or better yet, go away to somewhere that I can't see you." But hey, this is the Internet, so let's just all stop thinking as though this all has anything to do with real life.

It amazes me how often programmers can talk about state machines and functions while concurrently pretending that mathematics is, largely, something that either need not be discussed or is of secondary concern.

First, I'm pretty far away from "some guy from Mad Men". That's actually quite a reach into my psyche; it would be interesting to see how you came to such an incisive reading while knowing so little about me.

But as far as the business model, as someone that does not own a car but instead utilizes a mix of public transit, bicycle, ZipCar (sometimes renting the VW Golf, sometimes the Jeep, etc.), and Uber to get around, I still think the Google car looks like something one buys for their four year old niece or nephew, and have faith that a car could check all the boxes functionality wise and still be designed to look, nice, at least. Maybe even really nice.

Tesla has stated publicly they believe that within three years their cars will be capable of full autonomy, and expect it to take another two years to receive regulatory approval. By fully autonomous they state you will be able to walk outside, have the car approach to meet you, it will open and close the door for you, you can fall asleep, and several hours later wake up at your destination.

Yes, Tesla is taking an incremental approach to releasing the feature sets that are required to have a fully autonomous vehicle, but no, the end product goals for Tesla and Google are not different in kind.

What certainly is different is the manufacturing approach the two companies are taking. Google is seemingly aiming to release a fully autonomous vehicle at version 1.0, meaning every system of the car, such as manufacturing process, sales, customer support, will be at version 1.0 at the same time. In contrast, when Tesla releases its version 1.0 of the fully autonomous driving feature set, they will already have very matured versions of the other components, such as their manufacturing process, battery and drive train technology, sales and marketing, customer support, etc.

Plus, the Google cars look like something one buys for their four year old niece or nephew.

Not necessarily. Goods & services can be differentiated by qualitative as well as quantitative measures. For example, and just a personal anecdote, I like Lyft more than Uber, as a company, but generally use Uber because it generally has quicker pickup times. I don't have a clue as to what the price differential might be. "Reliability" is an especially important component in this type of market, because you're trying to get somewhere for some reason and willing to pay, so there is less price elasticity overall for this product. A small increase in price for 95% of the time (averaged out over geographical-time units) would not likely be sufficient to outweigh the gain in reliability and convenience.

There are other explanations / scenarios of course. I have a degree in economics, and, well, respectfully this seems more like a business/marketing domain issue. The change I was proposing would be at the same time too small of a price change and too muddled with other (real world, real time) variables to be well-modeled in the realm of economics.

Surge pricing is avoided by customers. Solution, never change price on consumer side but have sliding payment to drivers. Increase flat consumer charge / mile by $0.25 and then use algorithms to determine where / when heavy usage is expected and increase pay to drivers during and briefly before. Patent pending, of course.

Just because you're handing over money, doesn't mean you are happy to relinquish all of your privacy. Entering a very grey area.

Or don't lock people up away from their community for non violent crimes. So many options!

Which is prob just as fun and pleasant of an experience as delivery by drone.

Perhaps someone should fork this behavior and start dropping care packages for prisoners. Good chocolate. Textbooks, self help books, poetry and literature. Letters from family members. Comfortable underwear. Assistance for those soon to be released. A kind rebellion against the unblinking barbed wire.

If that is all it will do why not write and release. Interesting analogy. Viruses are now understood to facilitate horizontal gene transfer. Viruses and the rest of our microbiome are functionally key constituents of the "human" organism. This relationship is not a one off. It is found, to a greater or lesser extent, in many biological systems. Yet, we have only formally welcomed one such distinction into the public discourse surrounding the Internet : Memes. I think there is an argument to be made that, software viruses are not absolutely bad, and that code once release has a life of its own. We should therefore accept, and in some circumstances embrace, such contributions to the code base of the Internet.

Baltimorean here. Most days these blimps can be seen aloft. They appear less distant than I know they must be (given they are tethered at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds). They are very,,, present. It is unsettling. I lived in NYC for five years where I'm certain I was often under "surveillance" (cameras and what not in public spaces). And during the Baltimore Uprising, we now know there was a FBI/DoJ surveillance plane in the sky. It's just different, in a very bad way, to be able too look up, at any time, and see billion dollar military blimps. Kinda sad.

Hear, hear!

And orcas have vastly greater social intelligence than humans, but that doesn't stop humans from separating mother from calf at birth.

Don't get the point of this article. "We slaughter billions of cows, but walk up to one, look it in the eyes, and they clearly are saying, to any human, 'Can I be your friend, human?' What gives?"

Maybe the news should be, "Animals. So Smart and Friendly, but We Just Can't Stop Killing Them. What Gives?"

>polite people who couldn't care less about you baldly lying with a smile; constantly appeasing you as if you're a docile imbecile

Same here. Was attempting to figure out if this was sarcasm or not. This is how I'd describe LA, with one small difference. In LA you're treated as if you're super cool, rather than a docile imbecile. Had to laugh.

Indeed. Attention is given to patent trolls, but not so much (that I'm familiar with anyhow) the incentives around awarding (there are incentives in place to bias the granting of a patent, as opposed to denying one or claw back clauses regarging wrongly granted patents) or voiding patents.

Someone please come up with a butter that uses only algae produced inputs. You'll save the world.

Cowspiracy

So, that initial photo is really depressing. My take away, they can now be forced to work for next to nothing at night too.

I could share my personal experience, such as the time when I told a boss of mine with whom I had a great relationship that I was going to take a day off before I got close to burning out, using the actual words "burning out", but even though all the anecdotal responses are heart warming and all,...

1) this sort of thing is almost completely situational; i.e. depends on your specific context

2) you won't know exactly how it will play out until you've said words that you can't take back

3) at which point, if you miscalculated, you employer now has info that puts you at a disadvantage

4) company-employee relationships by definition and structure give the company asymmetric advantages in issues such as information, financial negotiations, and time-line strategies.

I say all this, not to be a wet-blanket, but rather to offer an alternative. You can accomplish the same thing using different words. If you're burning out, don't ask for understanding from your company, do the right thing for yourself and do what is necessary to put yourself back on a sustainable path. If this includes giving a different reason for how you end up dealing with it, tell them what they need to hear, but, do not add 'worried about your job' to 'burnt out'.

I guess I was saying, back up even more, why the heck, given Google's stated mission of "Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful", are they in this part of the market at all. Especially given, as you (I believe correctly) pointed out they need to put up pay walls to adapt to the changing landscape and in the process make unavailable any content that doesn't conform to their revenue goals. "YouTube Red" doesn't seem to conform to their mission of making all of the world's info accessible and useful. That word 'all' is important, since they constantly stress that point. And here, they are compromising exactly that point.

footnote regarding all: http://www.zdnet.com/article/google-targeting-all-the-worlds...

The profit motive is showing its true colors. It'd be a very tough argument to claim that "YouTube Red" is playing a vital role in Google's attempt to organize the world's data. It's purely a grab for revenue/profit.

Netflix (as well as HBO, and many others) already has commercial free streaming movies. HULU (as well as others) now has commercial free streaming tv. Content wise, what YouTube brings to the table is the user generated content, and YouTube Red does not seem to be centered around user generated content. I'd say user generated content is caught up in the mix, if anything. Google could index HULU and Netflix instead of creating YouTube Red.

Also, it is a false choice to say, given the assumption of ad-free services, I should either have to pay for ads or Google should take a loss in revenue. There are many other business models, such as P2P, that could facilitate ad-free user generated content channels.

The rub? P2P doesn't work too well with commercial content generation. And so, we find ourselves back to ads vs subscriptions, and back to the revenue grab.

When talent at Google is working on YouTube Red, it's not working on other problems. I can think of many other problems I'd rather see Google working on, given their core competencies.

also, I don't trust them with my DNA data anymore.

Even if statistical analysis checks out, the premise seems to be all wrong. Speaking generally now. I rarely read HN comments as having predictive intentions, but rather constructive (or not) criticism on things as they stand. Listening to criticism (i.e. negative feedback) about your product can be the difference between an amazing product and a mediocre products with a slow, drawn out fading into mediocre land.

Headline should read: "Legislators' arbitrary implementation of laws targeting drug use creates dangerous environment around a previously legal substance which is even now being safely used in clinical trials"

Bordering on victim blaming. We don't say to the people killed by Firestone Tires, they should have independently tested their tires. Unfortunately, victim blaming typically crops up when the circumstances involve illegal or morally contested activities, and by doing so make a difficult coversation even more convoluted.