phyller

I think lately we are looking for a reason to blame climate change for a lot of things because it is top of mind and we fear it so much. However, a historically cold climate disease like Lyme disease moving south is not explained by warming temperatures. I suspect several reasons.

First, an increase in the natural vectors for parasites. We have eliminated wolves and reduced other predators, and since we don't hunt small mammals for food anymore there could be an explosion in their population. Even deer, which we continue to hunt, have seen rapid population growth over the last century[1]. Looking at the population minimum from the deer population chart, I suspect that other potential disease vector hosts might have gone through a similar minimum followed by a rebound, and parasites are recovering with them.

Second, an increased awareness of these diseases is probably a big factor. I've known many people who have contracted Lyme disease. It used to be a big fight to get a doctor to take the possibility seriously, even in Connecticut where I used to live (the epicenter of Lyme disease)! As of even 5 years ago friends and family of mine could not get a prescription for the required antibiotic until they had a positive test result, which is finicky and allows the disease to progress over the weeks of delay. And Lyme is an incredibly debilitating disease. Diseases like Zika that have much more subtle symptoms (except in babies) could easily go unnoticed.

Finally, keep in mind that malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever used to be common in the United States. This is a natural range for these kind of mosquito borne diseases. We used to take mosquito population control much more seriously, perhaps we have become too apathetic about it. How many people do you know that are part of the local mosquito control association? Do you make sure there is no standing water on your property? Do we spray for mosquitos any more?

[1] http://www.deerfriendly.com/_/rsrc/1474256275604/decline-of-...

To that I would say the G-force strength and direction should be predictable, known even when they are designing the seats before building the rocket. So the passengers should be in an optimal position where they don't need to hold up their heads against the Gs but are cradled by the seat. I think that is very different from the bobsled analogy where the G-forces are changing intensity and direction all the time and you are not in an optimal position.

If the G-forces are unpredictable, well something went really really wrong.

But you are probably right in that there will be more medical restrictions than there are now. But someone with a spinal injury, or who is very pregnant, or very weak from age probably isn't going to be flying in today's aircraft either.

If you can bear with modern air travel today, the process, the rush, the waiting, the hassle with luggage, and worst of all being cramped in little seats with hundreds of other people around for really long periods of time, then I think you will probably be able to handle the rocket. The devil is in the details though.

Regardless, not only do I think I would I appreciate the shorter, more violent flight more as I got older, I would also appreciate the roll of the dice that if anything goes wrong we just all die instantly. Not a bad way to go, really.

Which is still incredibly rare, considering the size of the country. I think the point being made is if you care about human safety, things such as alcohol, automobiles, cancer, dementia, etc cause vastly more deaths and injuries, but don't get the same mind-share.

I think you mean "bawled", as in to cry noisily, right? Right?

Does anyone else think this is just erosion in the soil due to heavy rain? That's probably too boring of a story though. I think an earthquake that pulled the land apart that wide would be a major news event.

I extracted everything I could from those courses, which served as a basic comp sci foundation, saw that I was pretty good at it, took a few more not-as-important courses, then applied to a challenging coding bootcamp. I passed the coding tests, got in, worked and learned the hardest I have ever done so before for a few months, and continued studying on my own for a couple months. Then I applied for a job that required a practical coding test, knew someone at the company so they would at least give me a chance, and crushed the coding challenge. I was almost optimally prepared for the job and hit the ground running, while having no official credentials. It's been great since then. The only drawback is that I don't have the broad depth of knowledge/experience that I imagine can come from a CS degree. So I am planning on getting a masters.

These courses are for beginners, but I started with what I learned from a few courses in Coursera and turned it into a career as a software engineer. https://www.coursera.org/learn/learn-to-program and https://www.coursera.org/learn/program-code from Jennifer Campbell and Paul Gries from the University of Toronto laid a great foundation to build on. I think I took them the first time they offered it and I still don't understand how they completely nailed a new medium like that first try. It was very accessible, but with enough detail to make sense and the videos were so clear and concise. The Python one from Rice University, is a fun, awesome course, where you build games to learn. https://www.coursera.org/learn/interactive-python-1

The location of the accident appears to be at 0:36 of the video.

This is not about legal or illegal. If the Uber program is unable to detect a large object like that in the middle of the road using lasers, they shouldn't be driving on public roads at lethal speeds. That's all there is to it. If autonomous cars mean that whenever a little kid runs out into the street after a ball and they aren't on a crosswalk, they get run down, or the cars smash full speed into any obstructions in the road, then I don't think they are ready for public testing, though I strongly suspect this is an Uber specific problem.

And not only are they apparently incapable of handling the most basic emergency you can think of, but they are trying to spin it like it's not their fault instead of immediately identifying what went wrong. This makes it appear that not only are they incapable but untrustworthy too. These are dangerous machines going down public roads, they have at least as much responsility as the rest of us to not hit people with their cars. And I don't get to hit people with my car just because they are Jay walking, it's night, and I'm not paying attention. Half the people in NYC would be dead already. The autonomous car can't see what is ahead well enough to avoid a potential collision? Just like a human driver, it should slow down. Otherwise these things should still be getting refined on a private course.

The more I think about this the more it makes sense in a horrible way. The important thing for Uber is that they are first to market. If they are first to market there are two outcomes: a) they are successful, they make more money with lower fares because they don't need to pay drivers anymore. They basically take over the market that they are already dominating, beating competitors into bankruptcy. The market explodes as it is cheaper to get on demand cars than to own your own. $$$$$ b) they are not successful. They kill a hundred people in a month or two. The self-driving car industry gets shut down, and for the cost of a few hundred million dollars in settlements they keep their current market dominance in the current industry, but have to keep paying drivers. $$

The alternative, they are not first to market, someone else is and immediately replaces Uber with a network of cheaper self-driving cars: a) Uber goes out of business b) They can somehow convince someone to license the tech or sell them the cars at a reasonable price, making them vulnerable and less profitable, with no market advantage.

Interesting thought. They do see it as an existential threat to their company, and if any company would do something like that it would be them. But that would be pretty low, basically purposefully killing people in order to protect their business model.

This is Bizarro world for me. Until I read this article I couldn't conceive that government workers working too hard would be an issue. Not that we don't have government workers who have to work really hard in the USA. But that seems to be the exception and not the rule. I am more used to watching the reflection of a game of Solitaire off of workers glasses while dozens of people wait in line.

I get that it's apparently a problem there, but what are they doing right where more than half the government workforce are asking to be allowed to work late? Or are they just milking overtime pay? The latter would definitely fit much more comfortably into my experience.

Edit: "My experience" being running a small business for 7 years that required interacting with various local government employees from many different municipalities. The vast majority were very nice people, but my company (and my competitors) were run way more efficiently, and always using the latest technologies. I think it comes down to motivation and human nature. Sometimes they would casually do things that completely screwed over everyone that relied on them, in the worst places such things would be done on purpose for political reasons. The office just got asked to reduce expenses by 5%? Cut the hours for customer facing tasks by 50% so the public feels the pain and complains to the mayor.

"Uber recently placed an order for 24,000 Volvo cars that will be modified for driverless operation. Delivery is scheduled to start next year."

Wow. The other driverless car players should be all over this lobbying to shut Uber down. If Uber massively deploys a commercial service with subpar quality in order to "win", and then those cars start getting into accidents, the entire field is going to be delayed by 10 years. The general public is not going to just think "Uber is bad", they are going to think "self-driving cars are bad". Politicians will jump all over it and we'll see very restrictive laws that no one will have the guts to replace for a long time.

And honestly if that happens, that's probably what we would need anyway. If the industry doesn't want to be handcuffed they need to figure out some really good standardized regulations on sharing data with law enforcement, how to determine fault for self-driving vehicles, and what penalties there should be. That are fair and strict.

Yea good points. I didn't mean "right of way" as a legal term, but as a common phrase which means you are responsible as a vehicle driver to not hit people, even if they are doing stupid, illegal things. If you've had a bad day at work you don't get to speed up and swerve into little Johnny as he runs across the street after his ball, then tell his parents "he shouldn't have been in the street" and drive away.

This was not what I was expecting. If this had been an accident with a normal vehicle, I think the driver would have been found to be at least partially at fault, and guilty of involuntary manslaughter. But I'm not a lawyer.

I thought the victim jumped out into the street, but that clearly isn't the case. The pedestrian always has the right of way, a human would have seen her and slowed and swerved, and no one should be driving so fast that they can't stop for an obstacle that is just coming into view. And like many others mentioned, I'm sure she was visible to the human eye where the camera's exposure was set up to not wash out what was in the headlights.

Uber screwed up on this, maybe they were just lucky it didn't happen earlier.

For those down-voting this question, keep in mind the FAQs mention that stories can be posted from paywall sites that have work arounds:

Are paywalls ok?

"It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds.

In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

I don't think Zuckerberg will go, though I'm sure Facebook would like to send him. This puts them in a bad spot. To show respect, Zuckerberg should go. But then it sets a precedent that every country can summon him at will and it becomes an insult if he doesn't show up. And there are enough countries and committees that would enjoy ordering a US megacorp executive around, that it has a real risk of becoming a problem.

They'll probably send their highest level UK exec, or US exec that serves in some kind of ambassador role.

Edit: Plus, if Zuckerberg screws up and says something he shouldn't or commits to something he shouldn't, Facebook has no recourse. If they send a representative, that representative can always be deemed to not be properly representing the company, the statement can be clarified, and/or the representative can be chastised or replaced.

Your argument could also be used for exercise, that lifting weights should make you weaker, not stronger. Bearings and rubber bands wear out with use.

The distinction should be between living and nonliving systems. Living systems are frequently designed to strengthen things that are under stress. This is why working out makes you stronger; compressing, even breaking a bone can make it heal stronger. And why we build up tolerances to things. Our biological filters work with specialized proteins, our body can learn to express certain proteins more in response to stress. Perhaps that includes the ones involved in filtering?

I don't want to pick a side here, but "rural" in the USA and "rural" in Europe are two different things. Once you get away from the coasts, things get very sparse and very big. In many places, if you were 20km from a center of 50,000 people, you would actually be considered to be living in that town of 50,000 people. I personally live about 30km from my city center, I am considered part of that city (including my mailing address), and I don't think anyone around here considers it rural. Rural in America means you might have to drive hours on the weekend just to go shopping. 100s of kms of nothing between you and the next town in some places. And since they are ranching areas on poor soil, there are houses all in between that need to be reached. We are talking about one family on around 400 square kilometers of land. I have family that live in a community like that, and it is not uncommon in many areas.

Consider this, the state of Texas alone is bigger than all of France, and while it has several huge cities in it, it still has less than half the population of France. Montana is more than half the land area of France, and only has 1 million people living in it.

It would be a lot easier to just give up on the 1% that are truly scattered to the winds with little homesteads in the middle of no-where. But hopefully we can get some really good low earth orbit satellite internet and not have to worry about all this.

First ad hominem attacks don't help your point. Second, Google can help you out with some of your questions. Third, "they" is Chavez and his government. Chavez was socialist, socialism implies that the government takes over production from capitalists.

How was all this inevitable? When a government doesn't like that private companies are making money, and steal their property then replace skilled managers with party cronies, maybe things aren't going to work out so well. Maybe other companies will be afraid to invest in the country. So yea, the country gets a short-term boost from acquiring billions of dollars of assets, then all the profits that used to go to the company go to the state. But then it doesn't grow or handle problems properly because no one has the same incentive to work hard and innovate.

If the price of toilet paper is high in America, there are dozens of companies that are going to compete to get that profit, supply will rise and the price will drop. In Chavez's Venezuala, the toilet paper companies get nationalized, and government bureaucrats do their best to make and distribute enough toilet paper. Or maybe they don't and just report that they are doing a good job.

Here's a short list from 2012 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-venezuela-election-nation... and you can be sure there were many companies that bent over backwards to comply with governmental demands to avoid being nationalized. It turns out the Venezuelan government, like most other governments, is not good at managing production and providing a prosperous economy without a free market. And when regulations mean a company (for example a toilet paper company) can't make a profit to create what they are selling, they can't make enough of it, and soon they won't be able to make any of it.

It's all about human nature and incentives, and yes most 5 year olds understand that.

So we shouldn't try to help people in other countries until we are literally perfect? Or are you making the argument that the US government is in fact more oppressive than the Chinese government?

The reality for the US is if it tries to take action to improve perceived injustices in the world, it is being hypocritical and "imperialist". If it does nothing, it is selfish and heartless, having the power to help but doing nothing. As far as the US goes, we are screwed either way.

Regardless, I think I can look at what is happening in China, not like it, and feel foreboding about the future. This isn't some small country somewhere. This is the most populous country in the world and I empathize with the people who live there. And frankly, China is the heir apparent to the US as the global super power. This concerns us all.

This is a good question. Perhaps it is as simple as this is the leadership culture in China. Their great leaders are firm, are tough, do not tolerate dissent. And maybe people respect them for it.

"I don't know" is the real answer, but here is my guess.

My Chinese friends are incredibly social, incredibly loyal (to each other), trustworthy (to each other) to a fault. They may be ready to submit to an irresistible power, but if they feel they could resist, and somehow benefit their group, they might resist. They love China, they know a strong government is a necessity, they might not particularly care who that government is run by, and might be happy to help replace one dictator with another.

I think the social nature of the culture is the key here. Americans often try to stand out and be independent. Chinese seem to see themselves as part of a group, and they are very good at self-organizing even large groups of people. While the government is in power, that is their government. If it seems like the tide of the opinion of your group is we need a new government, maybe they'll take the streets en masse (like tiananmen square). So maybe the culture means that 99% of the time everyone is peaceful and cooperative, and then that 1% of the time everyone is in the streets burning down the governors house. I don't think anyone would enjoy mob rule, so maybe even the mob would tend to replace a strong ruler with another strong ruler.

These are just my thoughts based on the people I know.

But I think the Chinese government has always lived in fear of the mob. Their biggest threat has never been an outside power, but their own people. There are an incredible number of people living in a small area. This explains the one-child policy in my mind, too many people == not enough food == mobs in the street. So, perhaps as simply self-preservation, the government has 1) limited their population 2) ensured constant economic growth 3) limited the ability for a mob to form at all by controlling communication 4) tried to instill national pride and patriotism whenever possible.

Your credit score isn't affected by what you post on Hacker News. Your credit score is affected if you don't pay your bills. You'll find it harder to get credit in the future. I don't see the relation with state sponsored suppression.

Also, you can still buy things with cash. In China they use these apps to pay for things, you can't buy some things with cash.

I think the point that is being made is that regardless of whether or not that particular ruler is effective, in the long term they have weakened their society because they have broken the system that ensures that capable people/groups peacefully succeed each other to power.

The moment the Chinese government becomes aware of hacker news and starts paying people 50 cents a post, we won't be able to even find the legitimate comments under the epic pile of shill :D

I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet, when I think about it.

Also, there are actual Chinese people (a lot of them) that are pretty supportive of their government. And many that aren't. But unfortunately you can't assume trolling behavior based on this.

Or maybe he is the first of the next generation of leaders that has forgotten the lessons learned under Mao.

He might have raised the quality of life temporarily (I'm not sure even about that), but what is happening now in Venezuela was practically inevitable. You might be warmer for a little while as you take apart your house and burn it piece by piece, but in the end you will more assuredly freeze. In my opinion, it was a great tragedy that Chavez is not still alive today. Now people can say ridiculous things like this. If he was alive today, Venezuela would still be collapsing and it would be clear whose fault it was.

The US has been an instrumental part of a system where we all benefit when others are successful, it is not a zero-sum game. China's economic success is good for America. What is not good for an America is a new xenophobic super power that doesn't share our values.

A stable, prosperous, democratic China is ideal. An easy way for an authoritarian government to keep internal dissent down is to make an external enemy. Think of all the examples you mentioned. So this is probably bad news for the U.S. and the whole world.

I'm an American, I've had many close Chinese friends. What follows is completely anecdotal, but I've spent a lot of time trying to wrap my mind around it, for what it is worth.

Our cultures are incredibly different. At the same time our cultures are both unusually strong. And for some reason, part of American culture seems to be assuming everyone in the world is just like us, just in different circumstances. This is extremely foolish.

It took me quite a while to be able to understand some things about my Chinese friends that really confused and sometimes frustrated me. A big part of it is the American concept of freedom and personal independence is practically part of our DNA, while it is not valued very highly by many Chinese. Stability, peace and order are highly valued. Of course it would be nice to be able to do whatever you want, but it is much more important that the government is strong. Period. And you get away with what you can as an individual (I've noticed much less respect for the rule of law, much greater respect for personal relationships). And of course many (not all) are highly patriotic, as a great culture with a great history that has been under great pressure for generations, and feels that the rest of the world doesn't respect them like they should or wants to see them fail.

I guess I'd sum it up, that it seems to me an unusual amount of mainland Chinese would choose strength over freedom, and almost all mainland Chinese see themselves as part of a bigger society and a somewhat oppressive government is inevitable and it is futile to resist.

In America, we would prefer to free 10 guilty people than unjustly imprison 1 innocent person. In China, the concept is reversed, it is better to imprison 10 innocent people than let 1 guilty person go free. I actually heard someone say that. Think about it.