Puerto Rico is not a foreign country so these rules you cited don't apply. If you are a bone-fide PR resident, you don't owe federal tax (FICA still applies). However Act 20 (and Act 22) are recent changes to try to bring more job creator-types to the island.
Most successful businesses are not the result of passion projects. OP's problem isn't that he lacks ideas (so he claims), it's that he has the common affliction of not being able to follow through on them. Even if we all want to be Steve Jobs, most of us won't be.
But we probably do agree that constantly comparing oneself to others is not good for emotional well-being.
My advice to OP: don't focus on outcomes (ie, 'this 22 year-old did X, why haven't I?), focus on the process. Your goal should be to each day do work and spend your time in a way of which you would be proud. Avoid the hot and cold cycle of overwork / burnout and procrastination.
> Most successful businesses are not the result of passion projects.
I would argue against that statement. What makes you say that? Passion is the necessary driving force to keep someone motivated enough to follow through.
Was Rockefeller passionate about oil? Sam Walton about discount pricing? I think most successful entrepreneurs are just natural-born businessmen, and the specifics of their industry are mostly incidental.
You're probably looking at this from inside the SV bubble, but I could make a similar case there, too. Plenty of apps just ride the latest trend, and would pivot in a heart beat if it made if it makes business sense.
It depends on the type of trader. Before the days of automation, it was essential. If you could do the mental math the fastest, you would get the best trades. Not surprisingly, this skill matters less when all your trading activity is conducted by algorithms.
Fear mongering? This isn't Sarah Palin and her death panels. I'm sure Hawking and Musk are smarter and more knowledgeable on the subject than either of us, so maybe it's worth listening to them rather than dismissing out of hand. I don't see what they would have to personally gain by raising the alarm here.
Read Superintelligence by Bostrom to help see where they're coming from. It doesn't think AI will be evil either (unless perhaps those who develop it and determine its goals are...). But AI could run out of our control, or have us fall victim of unintended consequences.
> But AI could run out of our control, or have us fall victim of unintended consequences.
A lot of people didn't understand this about 2001: Hal was actually doing the logical thing, he was doing his job. The human was unreliable and was indeed endangering the mission. Hal was a tool of mankind, just like the bone that the ape uses to kill in the first scene.
In the same way when we talk about the dangers of AI we tend to personify them and expect them to be either intelligently nefarious (skynet, matrix) or out of control (bug, malfunction).
What we don't imagine is that we might end up being on the wrong end of a perfectly rational decision, or that we don't realize the consequences of the process that we set them to do.
I'm sure Hawking and Musk are smarter and more knowledgeable on the subject than either of us...
That is not a reasonable argument. They have demonstrated nothing but a fear and postulation and we cannot accept authority as evidence. Thus is the nature of science.
The topic of AI and its implications is unavoidably speculative, because we are likely still many decades away from it being a risk and we don't yet know what path science will take to reach that point. So for now, we're mostly limited to thought experiments.
I never said we should defer to their 'authority' either. But it is a conversation worth having, and the sooner the better.
Fear is a demonstration of non competency?
So there can never be harmful technologies?
If someone more knowledgeable than me on a subject fears it, well I think it's worth at least listening to him. Not dismissing his concerns arrogantly.
And when those person are one of the greatest scientist and one of the greatest entrepreneur of our time, both with some kind of expertise in AI, well...
You don't get it. Science relies on published peer reviewed, repeatable, testable evidence. Not the authority of famous, rich, or even smart people. You can accept authority as much as you personally want, but the reason society progresses technologically, and even towards an artificial intelligence, is because of published, peer reviewed, testable, repeatable evidence. If what they fear is backed by such evidence then they should make such evidence available.
So you changed your mind? Partaking into and funding research on the subject is now not sufficient to express themselves? And i'm the one not being cohesive?
And please stop with your arogant (and erronous) definition of what science is and science is not.
Higgs theorized the Higg's boson existence in the 60s, that could not be tested until 50 years later, are you saying this was not science?
Einstein's general relativity predicted the existence of black holes in 1916, we still don't have definit, hard proof of their existence, is it not science?
The Big Bang theorie has never been proven (data from last year BICEP2 experiment are still being dissected), is it not science?
Should we not talk about all this subjects because they are not proven?
What you are referring to, is the scientific method, which is the way we use to decide if something is sufficiently proven to be deemed as true or not, not the definition of science itself.
Publishing and peer-review is one part of science, but you are missing an equally important one, which is coming up with (hopefully testable) hypotheses.
But how can you have something testable about something that does not exist yet? You would have to have evidence that an actual, intelligent program does something hostile, which is obviously impossible at the time since AGI has not been invented yet.
However, we do have evidence of naturally occuring hostile intelligence. If an AGI is vastly superior in some regards (for example through much tighter integration in knowledge and control systems), it could in fact pose a danger. The article even clearly states a hypothesis: "Humans, who are limited by slow biological evolution, couldn't compete and would be superseded."
We can’t really assign a probability of occurrence to scenarios like these, thus we have to include it in the list of events that could potentially wipe us out and which we may be able to prevent. Since people are actively working on AGI, it should probably be somewhere at the top where nuclear warfare, global warming and comet impacts are listed.
I haven't purchased ebooks through Barnes and Noble, but I understand how annoying it can be getting all the ebook stores/ecosystems/formats/devices to play nice with each other. It was the reason I continued to buy paper books up until recently.
My solution: buy your ebook in any store that allows downloads (Amazon, Google, Kobo), and import into Calibre. Change settings to automatically convert imported ebooks to .epub format if they aren't already (the DRM-stripping plugin is optional ;-)). Set your library folder to dropbox, and voila, you have unfettered access from anywhere (and transferring to your Kobo Aura is easy too).
Yep, this is exactly what I've been doing for years. Using Dropbox as Calibre's library folder is awesome...gives me instant access to all my books from just about any device.
This is exactly what I've been doing and it works fine for me. Like you, I just buy from wherever sells.
By stopping downloads, they're obviously trying to stop piracy, but if other companies follow suit, surely there will be technical solution found sooner or later. Maybe they're just trying to do as much as they can.
Perhaps they don't know that those of us who download and strip DRM aren't necessarily pirates - just looking after own own (legally purchased) books in a system that we prefer?
As long as there are multiple sources where you can download your paid-for ebook, this decision by B&N will accomplish nothing, other than killing potential sales to people like us.
I don't mind paying $10 for an ebook. I just want a good user experience. This means no DRM and full control of the content.
