Not a huge loss for the US, but I will probably never go back due to this. Even if you have insurace, your life will be hell for a while due to having to fight your insurance company over a tremendous bill. I don't want to have to think twice if I should bring in my son to the hospital or not, and frankly, the US doesn't have anything unique enough to offer to offset that risk. I'm also doing my best to stay away from conferences, preferring instead Canada, European or Asian destinations.
That's a very good analogy. Just don't underestimate how quickly the tech can progress in this day and age, I did that mistake myself. Less than two years ago I was very excited about the Rift and bought a dev kit. As someone who works in computer vision etc, I was convinced though that good tracking would be many years out, and then suddenly there were the lighthouse solution from Valve. Now I've had the same thought about inside-out tracking (by means of vision), but even that seems to be arriving much faster than I initially anticipated. Today every big tech company from MS, Google, Facebook, to Valve, and hardware companies such as Samsung, HTC and Nvidia/ATI manufacturers are pushing hard on every frontier of VR. I agree the form factor has to change to allow mass adoption, but expect much faster progress than what happened with phones in the 80s.
Wii and Kinect sucked because they tried translating predefined motions to button-presses, with no added benefit over pressing that button on a controller. And they weren't particularly good at it. You don't see how VR is different, have you even tried the Vive?
For the record I was hugely bearish on the Wii, Kinect, 3D tv and movies, and rightly so. But there is no question in my mind that VR will be huge.
They have a powerful authoritarian regime run by engineers. In cases where there is a need to act quickly and decisively, that is an advantage. No need to convince the public (which in this case is already on board).
I'm not sure those number take into account all the stuff that China is manufacturing for the US, that is not consumed locally. Yes, that CO2 is released in China but it's paid for by USD.
Of course there might be new occupations around the corner, but given that most of every material and cultural need is already satisfied, except for eternal life, I don't see what occupations billions of people could transition to that people or businesses would pay money for.
Another view is: I could definitely invest especially the forced pension better myself. The problem is most people would use that money for consumption if they had a choice, and then at old age they would blame society for having to live on the street (and in the end probably get a handout anyway). Perhaps in the end all of us are better off if we "force" these saving for most people.
> How do you motivate a kid who knows he has a guaranteed job at his parent's investment firm, that has trust portfolios that will support him forever?
You don't. And that's why (among other factors) most families squander their wealth within two generations.
Spot on. I would also say that one of the most important traits you inherit from your parents is your propensity for taking risks. For example, my parents are very risk-averse which also means they understand next to nothing about investing and the economy. That rubbed off on me, and economics was a huge blind spot in my knowledge until I educated myself in my late 20s. I think being surrounded by risk-averse people also increase the social cost of failure. I.e. lose some money on an investment or start a business the fails and you'll never hear the end of it.
Or better, convert it to the opportunity cost of spending it, which is the base price plus all the gains over X years had it been invested instead of spent.
Spot on. I'm so surprised so see so many close minded tech geeks here on HN. Is it really so difficult to extrapolate from the current of VR tech to a few years out? My guess is most negative people on here hasn't actually tried the Vive.
As a late 20s millennial, what if having a quarter life crisis is actually the sanest thing? Why shouldn't we have a crisis? We live on this earth for some 80 years, most of it which we have to spend commuting, in cubicles or doing other chores just for sustenance. Inevitably our body will fail us, we'll be in pain, we'll die, loved ones will die. Nothing we do really matters all that much either. I wouldn't say I'm depressed or overly concerned with these things but they're increasingly in the back of my mind. I'm just saying, maybe thinking about these things is the sane thing to do? Just because people in the past didn't have time to think about it because they were fighting for their lives, does that make it better or right?
That speaks more for the simplicity of the courses of your university more than against my position. Are you really Swedish? I'm going to assume not. Engineering classes at Swedish universities typically don't give points that add up to a grade cutoff point. You might get an average grade of all projects and finals. The final exam is typically 5 hours long with 5-10 very difficult questions. In my CS program we had to work 60+ hours minimum a week, and classes often had 70%+ failure rates. This is not an environment where you can get a second job, and to my knowledge, none of my classmates or anyone I knew did so, except during summers.
American undergraduate classes are typically easier in my experience,. At the universities I went to (University of Washington and KTH) the Swedish undergraduate classes were more like the graduate classes in my experience. When I say 60+ hours a week I mean it. Who in their right mind works that much and gets a second job? And even if you could that doesn't mean that most people can.
As an example: in the engineering programs of KTH, typically half of the students don't make it through the first year. Many classes has a 70%+ failure rate.
> Personally I do not want any machine learning consensus algorithm with control over a surgical procedure in my body
Isn't the surgeon's brain a machine learning algorithm in physical form? Humans are more versatile today and can adapt do different situations, but I don't see this as a argument against machine learning necessarily.
Try to keep an open mind. Take any chance to try the HTC Vive and judge for yourself. IMO it's not a gimmick this time around, like smart watches, Google Glass or 3D TV, this is the next big thing in computing. I think VR will change humanity more in the next 20-30 years than the telephone, TV and maybe even the internet combined.
Long working hours and wealth is not as strong of a status symbol in European countries. Being there for your kids as a father, being well-rounded with many interesting hobbies and having lots of spare time / vacation is relatively more important I think.
I love it when people make doom and gloom predictions. If you are so convinced, put your money where your mouth is. Short the S&P500 with everything you've got and post a screen shot here.
>> “An adult mentor opens up these new worlds that wouldn’t be open to them,” she adds. Of course, critics might worry about kids interacting with adults online in this way, but as Ito notes, when there’s a productive task at hand, it’s similar to how guilds have passed on knowledge for ages: knowledgeable adults mentoring young people.
Kids can't interact with adults online? What has this world come to?