zizee

And each human is unique, making it is really difficult to QA/monitor/rollout updates to the fleet.

Maybe? But it doesn't make you less of an ass.

That sounds really cool, I'll look for it on YouTube. Thanks for the recommendation. This play, in turn reminds me of a scene from a terrible (but at the same time fun) film Reign of Fire. Set in a post apocalyptic world, the adults are entertaining kids by staging a play version of Empire Strikes Back, based on their memories of seeing it when they themselves were children.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCBA1wii70o

https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0253556/

> We needed readily available high grade energy ...

You say this as if it is a fact. It's a decent theory, but it's hardly so certain that you should write with such conviction.

I've wanted to write a short story about this for a while, with this sort of technology. The story of Genesis before the truth is obfuscated by countless retellings, until it evolves into a supernatural origin story.

> you shouldn't make arguments about life experience either way

These two arguments are not equivalent. Mathematically speaking, one side has to find just 20+% counter examples and the "vast majority" argument crumbles.

This thread has so many different people, from different parts of the world chiming in to say "this is not my lived experience", and you are still digging in to say "I'm right, the vast majority fit this mould".

I really didnt want to start a big discussion about this... but I just can't help myself, so i will dig in.

You're actually missing my main point. It really isn't about Staples, or North American vs the world, print quality, or preferences for B&W vs colour.

My main point is this: Don't fall into the trap of thinking your life experience always maps well to eveyone else you interact with in life.

I too am in Australia, but 15 minute drive into a small town without a print shop. Perhaps Australia is a oddity, and most people/places worldwide do in fact have easy access to a local print shop, but I am guessing the grandparent is seeing things from the perspective of a north American and in my experience it is a relative safe bet that the north American experience does not usually translate to the rest of the world where the majority of people live.

FWIW my 20% number was pulled out of the air and based on very rough knowledge of HNs userbase.

Well the sooner countries can start to transition to an economy that is not reliant on perpetual population growth the better.

I am always amazed at news reports from Japan about how the sky is falling because their population is shrinking. For some reason no one ever says "on the plus side, Japan is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, a slow decrease in population will help improve quality of life measures and sustainability".

> Even for those non-professional uses it's probably better to put the PDF on a flash drive, walk into Staples and print it on their machines

I'm not trying to be argumentative, and what I'm going to say might be a "well obviously, duh" comment: This advice is really only applicable to those who have convenient access to a "staples", which is probably only 20% of us here. It is also only convienient if you don't have to regularly print things, and/or need things printed quickly.

Why am I bothering to write this? I guess I want you and others like you to not assume everyone is in the same situation as you. It's an easy trap to fall into, and especially dangerous if you are a builder wanting to take things to market (like so many people here on HN are).

I agree that Australia's economy is propped up by continued ion growth, a giant pyramid scheme if you'll excuse the hyperbole.

However Australia has such a large amount of land, and such a small population that forecasted worldwide population drop won't affect Australia so much. It's such a desirable place to live that immigration at the current rates will be sustainable regardless of the rest of the world's population growth rate. Whether or not our cities can keep up with the growth and maintain their high levels of livability is another question.

I'd also question your statement about population drop on the next 15-20 years. All forecasts I have seen are that the world's population will continue to grow until the end of the century. If the world's population were set to start shrinking in such a short timeframe, I'd think it would be a huge talking point in any discussion about sustainability and global warming.

> I wasn't talking about rural cities.

I think you misunderstood me. Your comment was in response to:

> I was actually very surprised how sparse the retail was. Felt very much like rural America.

You then went on to argue that retail is not more developed because existing retailers are conspiring to keep the bigger retailers out.

I am arguing that there need not be a conspiracy. The real reason is more likely that it is not economical for a lot of big box retailers to serve such a small population.

I was also responding to the great grandparent's comment. They should not be surprised at a rural America level of retail on the big island of Hawaii, as it is pretty much rural America, what with low population density and isolated location.

There is no need to look for conspiracies.

There is only 185k people living on the "big island". I'm not sure why people would expect something other than a rural America level of services, when it is really just a small city of people effectively in the middle of no where.

Note that smaller cities in rural America service a much larger population than just the city itself. The island does not have a surrounding population that can drive an hour in once a week to make use of a big box stores.

Google maps says there is a Walmart, Kmart, Sears and a number of other well known American brands. It's not like they are being blocked from entering the market.

The "owner" of the highway is the government, who regulates commercial traffic differently to personal traffic. The government places strict rules on who is allowed to use the highway, and how it is used.

The highway maintenance crew is akin to the person installing racks for CloudFlare.

If your boss understands software development, then the "dangerous" situation of being asked to do "easy" (but actually hard) things disappears, because your boss will understand that the "easy" things are actually hard, and the "hard" things are actually easy.

Weird, I thought i deleted this comment. I deleted it because I took the time to read the article mentioned above a bit closer. I believe it was arguing that gift-based economies were the origin of debt based economies (aka money) instead of money originating from bartering.

Stupidly I had misunderstood what was being written, and then I attacked that imagined position by making the same argument as they were actually making :facepalm:

Microsoft and friends would love this, as it would result in such a huge barrier to entry that only those who could pay large amounts for insurance woyld be able to enter the market, with insurance built into the price of the software.

Say goodbye to open source software!

This "gift economy" sounds someone trying to put a nobel spin on a debt based economy.

I bet in many cases if someone got a reputation for not reciprocating "gifts" they'd soon find themselves not receiving anything. Hardly a gift.

And why are people "hinting" at things in this economy, and why this is presented as something different from a direct request. How often have you come across people "hinting" at what they really want, when really they are demanding. Sounds like something out of a cliche mobster scene, "lovely tanks you have there Colonel, it would be a shame for anything to happen to them".

> No one ever assigns a specific value to the meat or cake or house-building labor, meaning debts can’t be transferred.

If the bakers wife were to "hint" to the butcher that their friend could do with some extra "iron", whilst simultaneously saying "did you enjoy those scones i gave you" (wink), then the debt is transferred. We can pretend that it wouldn't have happened, but people are people the world over. Some would be nice and help others because they like to help, others would use what leverage they have to get ahead in life.

This gift based economy just sounds like a passive aggressive debt based economy, and it doesn't sound real.

> Even if they keep increasing the numbers, they will probably move those new satellites in a much wider net

The only way to make a wider net whilst simultaneously adding satellites would be to raise the altitude of the satellites, which I am fairly certain is not possible for the existing satellites.

Someone said elsewhere thst it id not a heavily used airport. If there are inly a handful of flights a day I imagine that means there are only a select number of airlines arriving. If you were one of the select few airlines landing here, i could imagine you'd br able to schedule an experienced captain to be with a first timer when landing.

note: i am only speculating, and have no ideas of rules that prohibit two captain level pilots flying at once.

All good mate. Enjoy your weekend.

> I understand your comment perfectly and just tried to explain it's not a rational argument in this case.

I don't know how you can say you understand my comment perfectly when you then tell me my "argument" is not rational. I am not making any "argument" about different tax systems.

My original comment was a metacomment about the original comment being too strongly worded.

I agree with you that the current situation is broken, and a fresh look is required to solve it.

My comment was not arguing one way or another. Instead I was pointing out that the original wording of your top level comment might mislead people as it sounded like there was little doubt to the effectiveness of a Border Adjustment Tax, when in truth it has never been tried.

Rereading your original post it now seems more reasonable. I don't know if that is because it has been edited, or because I am reading it in a new light.

To be clear, I welcome the suggestion of trying new solutions. The current system is clearly broken.

> But can you explain how and why that is actually a better idea...

> ...so you should have very good research to back up a claim that the global flat rate tax is the better idea.

Should I presume the "you" in these sentences is me? Or is it some hypothetical future person making such claims? If you did mean me, I don't understand what part of what I wrote was me making any claims of superiority of one system over the other?

My comment was pointing out that the grandparents comments should not be written so definitively, where much doubt exists.

I hear what you are saying, and it makes a certain amount of sense for projects that survive on donations (possibly hard to implement due to the fungible nature of $$, but whatever)

However, Mozilla's revenue is mostly from search engine deals, no? If it is true that the Mozilla foundation is under control of people with goals not aligned with the mission to drive forward open internet, I am not sure what can be done? (Not saying this is true, but there have been a lot of grumbling about it)

Perhaps Mozilla's lasting contribution to the world will be as an apocryphal story, warning others of the dangers of ignoring/neglecting core competencies.

This is an interesting concept, and worthy of including in the discussion, but you are presenting Border Adjustment Tax as if the results are a certainty.

The Wikipedia article describes this as theoretical with quite a bit of uncertainty, and economists are far from concensus on what the outcomes would be.

There are also definitely winners and losers in this system, so it's not so simple to say it the proposal was killed just because some big companies were against it.

I've been thinking about this in relation to what Space X's Starship could mean for the future if it lives up to the promises.

Yes, there are opportunities for putting satellites into orbit at a discount. But what comes next? Tourism? Mining? Manufacturing?

This is a pretty poor solution for trying to get people to cooperate. If people are opposing good legislation just because it is being proposed by "the opposition", then the system is broken. Better to solve the problem directly, rather than some unplanned round-about solution with pretty clear downsides.

I read the full post linked to by the grand-parent, and I think you are mischaracterizing things.

Settling on 3 programming languages is a good compromise between "one language to rule them all", and "anything goes". Being limited a single language's talent pool can be quite limiting, as is only having one language to problems in. Having no limits on language choice also has obvious drawbacks.

The "7 fairly complex rules" are not _that_ complex considering they are rules for trying to tame a domain that is inherently complex. If you try and scale any software engineering team much beyond 30 engineers you will need to have similar rules regardless of whether you have a majestic monolith, microservices, or some mix of the two.

Rockets aren't inherently expensive. Air travel would also be prohibitively expensive if the aircraft was disposed of at the end of each flight.

If SpaceX's Starship plans come to fruition, the $/kg to orbit cost will fall dramatically.