As one aside on this, the main issue people have with regulations is not regulations in and of themselves, but the negative effect they have on small businesses and competition/entrepreneurship more generally. I think you'd find extremely few genuine voices against regulations that only start to apply once a company (and all associated entities) grosses in excess of e.g. $100 million annual revenue. By that point companies the costs (as a fraction of their total revenue) in ensuring compliance, and complying itself is only going to be a minuscule fraction of revenue. By contrast these same costs can, and do, destroy or simply prevent the formation of smaller companies that could greatly expand the market to the benefit of all.
Exactly. Large companies love regulations when they affect everybody since they can easily abide the regulations while they help to destroy potential competitors.
Keeping regulations focused on big players serves the dual purpose of focusing regulation where its affect will be most significant, while also ensuring it doesn't negatively affect the market. But yeah, like you're mentioning the big problem is that once companies reach a certain size they begin to develop the political connections necessary for them to simply kill, or at least castrate, any potential regulation that might genuinely require them to behave in a way that is inconvenient - even if it's better for society.
Libertarian hackers always think of regulations as pesky pinpricks from the nanny state but in this case, in their domain of software, regulations would actually serve more of something along the lines of industry standards to ensure that software is created up to code. Hackers want good code, don't they?
I don't understand why people have to otherize each other. No, again opposition to regulations has nothing to do with some ambiguous opposition to nanny stating in and of itself. That is tangential to the real issue. Before getting to that, let's take a really quick digression.
Tax payer funded systems are one of the most controversial things we have. You'll find sharp disagreement on topics like e.g. public vs private funding for everything from education to medical and a wide array of other issues. Yet you'll find most of nobody that wants to privatize e.g. the fire department. This is because most of everybody would agree that the fire department does a good job, does it efficiently, and does it cheaply.
The point of this is that if there were a regulatory framework that was unambiguously and intrinsically superior to any alternative you'd find next to no opposition to it. Everybody wants the same thing in the end -- we just disagree on what's more likely to get you there. In many ways, I think lemonade stands are just a timeless and perfect example. In many states in the US today it is literally illegal, or at least unlawful, for a kid to go sell lemonade in their front yard. They can [and have] faced ticketing, confiscation, and so on. This is clearly idiotic by any standard, yet the very rules and regulations the produced this were all at some point created with good intentions. Perhaps ensuring food safety, or avoiding money laundering, or whatever other rule they happen to be breaking by selling a cup of lemonade for a quarter.
A rule that would generally stand to impose substantial penalties for writing bad code is something that would have unimaginably vast consequences at the lower level. And I think you're looking more at destroying small business in the tech industry than in suddenly having a world where all code is "good". By contrast the companies at the top can afford to greatly expand their staff and create factory lines of code review, extensive internal penetration testing, general audits, and so on. And perhaps most importantly, when they do end up violating the rule they have the resources to manage this just fine. And so it's very possible that the regulation could have an overall net positive effect there. But if it were applied to society as a whole (instead of just large companies), I think you'd be effectively killing off tech industry competition.
Police departments have major limitations on manpower and budgets. Setting up sting operations with fake packages, surveillance, and all this stuff is going to be extremely expensive on both accounts. And the ultimate reward is that you just busted a guy who either committed a very minor felony which some states, such as California, are even moving to change to a misdemeanor. And I'd imagine a decent number of the offenders are not exactly financially well to do, meaning they may not even be able to pay the fines to recoup some of the costs involved in busting them.
Think about the sort of petty offenses that are more actively pursued. You'll almost always find they tend to be low execution cost with a high probability of receiving payment: traffic violations, prostitution stings, drug related stuff, etc.
Pretty common misconception, but what you're implying is not how/why you have 0G in space. So for instance the space station still experiences about 90% of Earth's gravity. Orbit is about going really fast, horizontally. If you flew straight up to the ISS, you'd fall right back down. This is why when you see a rocket take off their course looks extremely bent - it's not an optical illusion.
So why horizontally? Imagine there was no air resistance on Earth. If you shot a bullet that bullet would keep going until the force of gravity pulled it down and it hit the Earth. But now imagine that you shoot it fast enough that the vertical distance gravity is pulling it down is less than the vertical distance it gains due to the curvature of the Earth. That equilibrium is exactly what orbit is. It also leads to the highly counter intuitive fact that the height of a given circular orbit is determined exclusively by how fast an object is moving relative to the body it's orbiting. Mass doesn't matter.
Okay so back to the plane. If it's not intuitive yet imagine throwing a ball. It works exactly the same as our bullet, but we can visualize one important part easier. The ball's trajectory will be a parabola. And at the highest point of that parabola the net vertical force on the ball is zero. It's where the force you exerted on it to send it up, and the force of gravity pulling it down eventually reach an equilibrium. Something inside of that ball would experience 0g at the moment when it was at its parabolic peak. And that's exactly what these planes do. They simply 'throw' the planes into a parabolic path, and the passengers experience near 0 g while traveling through the parabolic peak.
> at the highest point of that parabola the net vertical force on the ball is zero
This is not correct. If we count gravity as a force, then it is pulling on the ball just as much at the peak of the parabola as anywhere else, and once the ball leaves your hand gravity is the only force on the ball (leaving out air resistance); your hand doesn't magically exert force on the ball once it's thrown.
If we do not count gravity as a force (which is the approach taken in General Relativity), then there is no force on the ball at all (leaving out air resistance) once it leaves your hand.
Let's talk about pedantry for a minute. Did you notice the comment I was responding to? It was an individual who thought orbit had something to do with escape velocity. Like many people he probably thought that orbit was about 'escaping' Earth's gravity and then just floating in 0g. In other words he knows nothing about orbital mechanics and, most likely, next to nothing about physics in general.
There is no vernacular in my post. When I use the word force, I am stating it in a purely colloquial sense. And in this regard everything is completely cogent and clear description of the forces (har har) in play. By contrast look at the top post. It provides a couple of sentences along with a link to Wiki for further elaboration that immediately jumps into orbital mechanics, assuming an understanding of delta v, etc. There's nothing wrong with the comment in and of itself, but it's an absolutely awful comment in regards to the audience it's talking to.
And I think this pedantry a big part of the reason that so many individuals are completely scientifically illiterate. Most of all science is relatively simple, but one of the biggest issues is vernacular. And indeed within a field there is extremely good reason for this vernacular. It is not only vastly more concise than trying to obtusely explain every single concept from the ground up, but it is also more precise. Do I mean force? Do I mean momentum? Speed? Velocity? Every concept is entirely different, but in the world outside outside of the field -- none of this matters. Theories are just ideas, speed and velocity are same thing, and so on.
The point of this is, do you think my post would be clear and accurate in what it is understood to mean from the demographic that the message was directed at? I think the answer is absolutely yes. And the casual use of terms that have more precise meanings within a vernacular is in no way going to mislead them as to the meaning of what is said. Far from it, in my opinion - using more appropriate terminology is likely to lead to a less elucidating post!
> Did you notice the comment I was responding to? It was an individual who thought orbit had something to do with escape velocity.
Yes, and did you notice that I didn't object at all to the part of your post that corrected the "escaping Earth's gravity" misconception? That's because there was nothing wrong with it. I only objected to the part of your post that was incorrect.
> he knows nothing about orbital mechanics and, most likely, next to nothing about physics in general.
In which case the last thing you should want to do is to tell him things about physics that are wrong. Which is why I corrected the wrong thing you told him.
> There is no vernacular in my post.
My objection had nothing whatever to do with your choice of words. You made a factually incorrect statement and I corrected it. That's all there is to it.
I don’t think it was an attack on your use of language. Even if most probably don’t agree that you are helping illiteracy by alternative use of well defined concepts.
It’s factually wrong to say that the net force is zero at the peak, when what is zero, is the vertical speed.
What was questioned was the feeling of weightlessness. You imply that weightlessness is only felt at the peak of the parabolic path. When the ball leaves the throwers hand, the only force, disregarding air resistance, acting on the ball is the force of gravity, until it hits the ground. Someone inside the ball will feel weightlessness all the way from leaving the throwers hand to hitting the ground. There is no special feeling at or around the peak.
You're completely correct. I unintentionally implied weightlessness only at the parabolic peak. And I think what you've said is how you should correct things. Words convey ideas. What matters is not the words, but the ideas. Correct the idea and things are clear, focus on the words and things tend to muddle.
> in this regard everything is completely cogent and clear description of the forces (har har) in play.
Not everything you said, no. That's why I objected. If you want more detail, you said:
> The ball's trajectory will be a parabola. And at the highest point of that parabola the net vertical force on the ball is zero. It's where the force you exerted on it to send it up, and the force of gravity pulling it down eventually reach an equilibrium. Something inside of that ball would experience 0g at the moment when it was at its parabolic peak.
Actually, the net force on the ball (disregarding air resistance) is the same throughout the entire trajectory once it leaves your hand. (Here I'm taking the Newtonian view that considers gravity to be a force.) That's why the ball continuously accelerates downward by the same amount throughout the entire trajectory once it leaves your hand--which it has to in order for the trajectory to be a parabola. The force you exert on it to throw it upward stops as soon as it leaves your hand, so the only force thereafter is gravity. And since the force of gravity is not felt, the ball is in free fall, feeling 0 g, for the entire parabola.
So the part of your post that I quoted was not a "completely cogent and clear description of the forces"; it was a wrong description of the forces. That's why I corrected it.
Orbiting a planet is basically free fall with translational velocity. If the earth were flat we would fall down and horizontally and eventually hit the ground.
However the earth is a sphere and the direction of the free-fall constantly adjusts itself to point towards the center of the sphere creating an orbit.
It is literally throwing oneself at the ground and missing.
I have no idea what's up with HN lately. Your comment is completely correct... and downvoted? This site is starting to become more like Reddit everyday.
Chess seems to show the opposite. In particular speak with literally just about any older grandmaster and you'll invariably find their mental faculties are still in great shape. Of course there's always a correlation != causation problem that plagues all sort of social studies. This observation does not necessarily mean that becoming a grandmaster would slow mental decline. It could simply be something within the individuals that drives them to become grandmasters that itself is what staves off the decline.
Ultimately I'm not entirely sure what the point of science along these lines even is. The big risk is you notice a correlation to something and assume causation. You then start working to try to pursue that end in cases where the correlation is good - or avoid that end in cases where the correlation is bad. And you spend immense energy and resources doing this, only to find that in the end there was no actual causation at all and you just spent immense amounts of time, energy, and resources doing nothing.
Even worse is that sometimes you might pursue the correlation and falsely end up at the desired end thus assuming causality when none exists. Maybe the best example of this is human/animal sacrifice of ancient civilizations. Those sacrifices were not baseless from their perspective. What undoubtedly happened is that at one point a civilization has e.g. a bad harvest. They feel they must have wronged the gods, so they end up sacrificing something. And, completely by coincidence, the next harvest is bountiful. Lo and behold, you now have centuries of human and animal sacrifice in a model where you can ignore any negative outcomes by suggesting it simply means that you didn't sacrifice enough. Keep ramping up the sacrifices and indeed eventually you'll get a good harvest, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the sacrifices you've made.
> It could simply be something within the individuals that drives them to become grandmasters that itself is what staves off the decline.
Or it could just be survival bias. If your mental faculties are in decline, then you would be disinclined to continue competing in chess. I can imagine people would stop competing at that level long before they completely lost their marbles.
People generally reach grandmaster when they're very young and I'm not restricting my statement to only those that continue to play in international tournaments. One may retire from high level competitive chess, but people rarely give up the game altogether.
Google facing anti-trust investigations is inevitable at this point. When the hearings and inquiries come, holding onto domain(s) directly connected to the trademarks of would-be competitors is going to be a liability. It might not be unlawful in any way whatsoever, but having to answer why you're holding onto these properties in a way that doesn't demonstrate a promotion of anti-competitive values is going to be, at best, challenging.
If the drivers are in any way even possibly breaking the law, then the riders could go to the police. If the drivers were acting in a completely lawful, but undesirable, way then the riders could give the drivers a low rating. It is very safe to assume that the servers of Uber (and all other ride sharing services) work to opaquely disconnect passengers and drivers when either party has given the other a low rating. It's a good and obvious idea on all levels, including even just optimizing for max profit.
This has also been my experience. I think a meta here is that the vast majority of cab drivers don't, and can't, own their cab. Medallion cabs, for instance, are sold based on bids and have gone for upwards of $2 million and as "low" as around $500k. And in some places they have government granted monopolies meaning playing this game is the only way to drive a cab.
So most drivers rent their taxi, often by the day. And since fares are front-loaded (you earn a lot more picking up 100 people for 5 miles, than 1 person for 500 miles) it creates an incentive for taxi drivers to go crazy. Granted that same pressure is ostensibly there for Uber drivers, but I think it's different when your car is your car rather than a temporary asset you just dropped a fair chunk of change to rent for a single day.
Somehow transportation, world wide, always ends up in these sort of scummy monopolistic rackets.
If you look at the history of the world there was an apparent (and counter intuitive) acceleration in the rate at which borders and governments were shifting, largely due to war and revolutions. Then we hit about 1945 and suddenly - it all but stopped. The only very large change being the fall of the Soviet Union, which did not involve direct war nor even revolution.
Nukes have made war between major powers a thing of the past, until they can be contained. 'Modern' nukes make Hiroshima and Nagasaki look like a joke. The 'Tsar Bomba' [1] is a nuclear weapon that was tested by Russia in 1961. Its yield, which was not at full capability, was more than three thousand times as powerful as Little Boy [2], the nuke that practically destroyed Hiroshima. You can't win wars against WMD.
A single missile that is failed to be detected or intercepted and you're looking at fatalities in the tens of millions. And there are thousands of these weapons operational and ready to fire today. Russia has even been developing a nuclear torpedo that's designed to create an artificial tsunami that would produce a devastating radioactive wave greater than 500 meters in height that would annihilate a target. The reason for a nuclear torpedo is to bypass all conventional anti-missile ballistic/laser/etc technology.
In my opinion the issue is relatively simple. If China's growth and development continues at even a fraction of its current pace they're going to become the most dominant nation in the world. This will change the world in unimaginable ways. The current powers on top are pretty happy with the status quo, and aren't ready to say goodnight just yet. Traditional war is not an option so I expect we're going to see a continuing increase in aggression on the two new fronts of war: economic and information.
For a while the trend has been towards smaller nukes (called tactical nukes), not bigger ones like in the 60s. The rational being that smaller, more precise nukes have a lower threshold of usability. Destroying Beijing and killing 20M people is a solution of last recourse, and would be disproportionate in retaliation to a tactical nuke, or a conventional attack resulting in massive casualties.
isn't there an american icbm that is capable of basically "carpet bombing" an area with these smaller nukes? i think the point of it was to increase devastation not decrease it since immediate death after a nuke decreases with distance
The article's headline and its content paint different pictures, with the title really just being clickbait. They're not laying off individuals but paying them to leave including upwards of a year of salary, a bonus, and maintaining benefits. And it was voluntary -- not 'pink slipping.'
I don't really think you can attribute this to the tax breaks, but if you can - then this would be an immense positive. Employee turnover is already very high pretty much everywhere now a days. Getting paid a year of salary, and more, to agree to leave? That's something I think the vast majority of workers would be absolutely thrilled to be offered. It's a potentially life changing offer giving somebody a chance to carry out any entrepreneurial fantasy they have, to get a fat head start on the joy of compound interest, or simply spending a year with bikinis, booze, and beaches if that's your thing.
If they don’t get enough employees to voluntarily leave, you can be sure that there will be forced layoffs (with probably worse terms).
Imagine you’re a 50 year old employee with a kid in college. Would you be thrilled to accept a year of salary with limited job prospects? What jobs do you think will be the first to be cut?
Don’t try to sugar coat it - when there are lay-offs (voluntarily or not), it’s rarely a positive for the majority of affected employees. And this in no way should be considered a positive effect of the corporate tax cuts.
Here's a more reasonable question. If you ask 10,000 random workers from various tech companies if they'd be willing to leave in exchange for more than a year of salary, + benefits, + a bonus. What percent would say yes? We can only imagine, but it's going to be huge.
If you don't want to leave, don't apply. And on that note - yeah people did have to apply, and some were rejected.
You’re presuming that those workers have good prospects for finding a new job as good as the one they currently have. This is harder when you are older.
He's "retired". It was just last month he was competing in a Fischer Random event with many of the top players today. [1] And he still regularly provides commentary, above and beyond that of an informal observer, on various games and events.
