Hacker News London meetup on 29th Sep with Harj - <AUTHOR> http://www.meetup.com/HNLondon/events/34527022/

<comment><USER2> I've been to a few of these now, even spoke at the last one, and it's an event each month that I really look forward to.

If you're close enough to London to make it home afterwards, then do what you can and make the effort to be there - well worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER3> Typical. The first HN Londeon meet-up in 5 months that I can't attend and you go and get a bigger venue and bag a YC Partner to give a talk.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, I would really love to go too, but I just went up to university in Scotland.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> > _I was wondering if any of you fancied volunteering to help out. In > particular we are looking for 2-3 people to help out with name badges and > the beer run._

I'd be more than happy to help—my email's in my profile. Let me know what needs doing and when. (I haven't got anything to record with though.)

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks. a small army has already been recruited.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you have to get tickets or anything? Do I just turn up like a normal internet site meetup?

I could help with a beer run if I get there earlier. I may suck at startups but I'm pretty practised at obtaining alcohol :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Sign up on meetup to help us track numbers. Otherwise just turn up. Thanks for the offer of help, think we just need a video person now.

<comment><USER6> That's cool :) Have done! Sounds like it could be interesting. Currently I'm starting out freelancing as a Web Developer so I'm sucking up any knowledge I can get my hands on (I'd like to expand and build it into a proper business).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can you please insert the event details here to the thread, too? I believe I'm not the only one who can't access meetup.com due to company blocking the site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thursday, September 29, 2011, 6:30 PM

Central Foundation Boys School

Cowper Street, London (map) Entrance through the blue doors on Cowper St, opposite XOYO.

I am very excited to announce the next Hacker News London meetup. After months of searching we have finally secured a new, large venue that will be able to accommodate all those who wish to come along, right next to the Old St roundabout.

However, the highlight of the evening is that Harj Taggar, YC partner and founder of Auctomatic, will be our headline speaker. In addition Harj will also hold a Q&A session, so please send us your questions or bring them along that evening. If you are looking to apply to YC or find out more about it, this is the perfect opportunity.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> We should have a hackathon at one of these.

<comment><USER6> That would be awesome. Somehow I've yet to attend a proper hackday but it seems like it would be a great experience.

<comment><USER9> <http://charityhack.org/> is happening this weekend if you want to go to one

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This looks great. What is the format like? Should I be concerned about being a loner if I come by myself?

<comment><AUTHOR> We'll start out with a few beers and pizzas, then do some talks and presentations followed by more beers. The crowd is really friendly and you'll meet lots of great new people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is there an IRC channel or something similar we can talk about the meetup in?

<comment><USER12> There's lots of HNers in #startups on freenode

<comment><USER11> Ah thanks, I'll definitely check it out!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Bummer. A Hacker News meetup in London and I'm going to be in Mountain View.

<comment><AUTHOR> We've been doing them for over a year and I was really surprised you have not come along yet.

<comment><USER13> Somehow I managed to miss the fact that they were happening. Where should I be signing up for notification?

EDIT: OK, I'm now following your Twitter feed. Silly me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When Hacker News holds an event, schedules need to make way!

</comment><comment><USER15> Is there a reason you chose not to do it in a pub?

<comment><USER16> We usually end up in the pub after the talks.

<comment><USER15> I know, I went a while back. It seems to me like holding it in a school and making beer runs seems counterproductive.

Most of the other regular london hackery type talk events (Hacks/Hackers, DC4420 spring to mind) take place in pubs.

Just curious, that's all.

<comment><AUTHOR> Decent pubs get very crowded and noisy, plus it's difficult to fit many people in. A hall gives us the opportunity to do more techy presentations.

We actually started out in a pub and have evolved into present format over time. We have the hall until 10, so if you are really hardcore you can always head to the pub after, I can imagine there will be quite a few people joining you.

<comment><USER15> Out of interest, have you been to DC4420? (<http://www.dc4420.org/>)

It has none of the problems you describe, but it's definitely worth a visit regardless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. Probably a Tuesday vs Thursday thing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Hacker News style site for programming tutorials - <AUTHOR> I am thinking of creating a new site and was wondering who thinks a hacker news style site where people post programming tutorials instead of news would be useful? <comment><USER2> I think it would be a wrong approach because with a style like HN, articles disappear from the main page and are hard to retrieve very soon. While in the case of a tutorial it might remain relevant for a long time and the order in which they are submitted is not important. While with news, how fresh a news is, is important.

<comment><USER3> That might be a function of the incredible volume of new posts that get submitted to HN, rather than being simply the effect of the algorithm. (If you're not getting 30 new posts each day, many articles will undoubtedly live on the front page for longer than a day.)

The algolia search seems very good in my opinion, I rarely simply can't find a post I remember and want to look up again days or even months after noticing it. Of course that is a proprietary search, isn't it?

At least it's a separate problem than the one solved by HN software / news.Arc (and probably Telescope, too).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hackr.io is pretty close to what you are thinking about.

<comment><USER5> Just adding another similar/relevant [https://dzone.com/links](https://dzone.com/links)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Although this site has "news" in it's name, people post articles, tutorials and other stuff here all the time, which is welcomed by the community. I don't think there's a need for a separate HN clone for a specific topic.

</comment><comment><USER7> Something like [http://pineapple.io](http://pineapple.io) ?

</comment><comment><USER8> It's not mine but a guy emailed me a week ago about something like this called [http://www.tutzpro.com/](http://www.tutzpro.com/) that he launched. I think there are a lot of similar sites though.

The major flaw with most of these sites (and especially the "curated X Y Z" versions) are they go out of date or just don't build up a community and wither and die with out of date information. That's the real trick.. not just delivering the information.

</comment><comment><USER9> Why not just do it. You could set up a Telescope instance, in an instant!

<comment><USER3> Maybe, but if there's an existing effort that just needs some additional community members, why not highlight it and join up?

Looks like hackr.io is pretty close to what he's asking for, but the first category I picked to look into I found only four articles, with none having more than two points from upvotes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> One of the features of HN is story churn. On the other hand, to be useful, tutorials typically require extended commitment on the part of the user. Even a very trivial tutorial is going to take ten minutes to digest _and_ require a context switch from browsing the internet to programming. At the very least, I will be hitting F12 in the browser.

A good tutorial might take hours, days or weeks of my time. In that time, I am not engaged with your site.

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER11> I have wanted to do a more general learning concept for my kid with my site [http://nextlesson.com](http://nextlesson.com) its just been a little busy. My idea was to build curated list of videos/tutorials by category/ topic / users age populated by social likes sort of like how ranker does it with for movies etc.

</comment><comment><USER12> I think a site like HN will be always a good direction to follow but beware of some 'issues':

\- HN hasn't annoying ads. (How will you monetise it? Because you must monetise it somehow in the near future and we have already a lot of 'code schools' where people pay a fee to access).

\- HN is his community. No community and your site will die. Many clones of HN have already died.

Anyway good luck!

</comment><comment><USER13> I love the idea. I wonder if 'Teach HN:' (or similar) might be an easy way to solve the problem within this community.

<comment><USER14> +1 to this idea. I'm going to try and start using 'Teach HN:'.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think you might have difficulty getting regular content with a site that focused only on tutorials. You might want to broaden the scope to programming projects or programming in general.

</comment><comment><USER16> One could post such tutorials to here and Reddit. I think it might be worth offering more organization, curation and features though.

</comment><comment><USER17> @gurisingh - I'm the founder of Hackr.io and we need plenty of help in running this site :) How about working on it together?

</comment><comment><USER18> Not really, seems too dis-organised.

<comment><AUTHOR> What if we add tags or categories to make it more organized?

<comment><USER6> I suspect that then we'll either have a system that is misused, or a team of draconic moderators who will ban half of the posts because they don't fit any of pre-created categories. Sorry for being pessimistic, but I've seen how efforts to categorise community-driven content have played out too many times in my life.

Is there a real problem that we're trying to solve here?

<comment><USER13> I'm not sure if you're talking about the original idea (ie - a curated list of tutorials) or the parent's idea (ie - adding tags and categories), but I have a couple ideas.

The original idea could (if a community formed) solve the PHP problem. If a true beginner programmer decides to learn a language (I pick on PHP but it can happen with any language), the true beginner has no context with which to evaluate learning resources. Hence, you end up in the situation where beginners learn from bad code.

Categories and tags worry me because it sounds chaotic, but it could go a long ways towards solving the problem Zed Shaw articulated in Early versus Beginning Programmers.

([http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning- coders/](http://zedshaw.com/2015/06/16/early-vs-beginning-coders/))

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I like the idea.

Or we could just post some of our tutorials here! This is an introductory one I wrote covering the basics of HTML, jQuery, and making a ToDo app with my database [http://gun.js.org/web/think.html](http://gun.js.org/web/think.html) .

</comment><comment><USER20> Not so much programming tutorials, but there's www.growthhackers.com for marketing article sharing. It's divided into categories (Paid, SEO, Content, etc.) though the content of the posted links usually isn't too great. I'm not sure what potential users would be looking for? Quick tutorials for the "Gee, I've always wanted to try that and have an hour" crowd or something more in depth that someone would come specifically looking for. If it's the latter, a directory supported by a voting system might be a little better. Just my $.02</comment>


Why I hate squid proxies - <AUTHOR> http://sonof.bandit.name/doku/doku.php/morgan/i_hate_squid

<comment><USER2> While I understand the frustration that gave birth to this rant, I would like to note that all this has nothing to do with squid per-se.

First of all, squid has nothing to do with ssh, irc or smtp - that's one's firewall, not the proxy.

As for the web traffic, which squid does work with - yeah, though luck. But you'll have that with any proxy, not only with squid.

Furthermore, in a larger corporate environment, you DO want to monitor your employees, which is one of the primary reasons they enforce proxies.

At work, you shouldn't be checking your personal mail. You shouldn't SSH to your home machine, you shouldn't use public IRC, and so on and so forth.

Chances are, the company has an SMTP server, and you can send relevant mail through that. For talking with co-workers, private IRC or jabber can be set up on the company's internal network.

All in all: yes, you will be limited in a corporate environment, and that is for a reason. It has hardly anything to do with squid, though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Squid listens on everything, and controlls what you can connect to. It /is/ a proxy /and/ a firewall.

My rant is technically based, given my knowledge of the functioning of Squid running both forwards /and/ in reverse.</comment></comment>


Teams Shouldn't Need to Reach Consensus - <AUTHOR> http://www.ctoaas.co/blog/2013/10/24/teams-shouldnt-need-to-reach-consensus/

<comment><USER2> Great writeup. Consensus is important, but total dependence on agreement can water down solutions and lead to gridlock. Plus, settling on a solution (however modified) that one person has advocated from the start helps them own it. So long as mistakes aren't lorded over anyone, this is a great way to help people develop professionally; you learn best from your mistakes, and from the initiatives you spearhead.

<comment><USER3> In such ways, let's say there's a team of 10 people working on a product. How do you avoid the "too many cooks spoils the meal" problem? Jane wants things open-source, Reggie wants the problem to be super-simple and will sacrifice features for simplicity, Joe wants infinite configurability... Without someone to over-rule the group and set the definite course, you could spend days/weeks/months along this track. You can make good arguments for any of these things, but there is no real "right" answer after infinite arguing sometimes. It comes down to what is best for the company, and people can disagree on that all the time.

In my (granted, limited) experience, I've preferred having someone set a definite course than have to deal with a group-think version of a decision.

<comment><USER2> This is where a mission and values come into play. Leadership sets the tone and provides a framework (people should have input during this process of course), then gets out of the way so its people can make their own decisions inside that model. You make it safer for people to take risks this way, and try something that not everyone might agree upon.

<comment><USER4> I totally agree with having lively discussion within a framework defined by the leadership. But it seems that the mission and values are usually at a pretty high level - so high that they don't necessarily help in coming up with a single solution. It still seems that someone ??in a non-leadership role?? needs to be empowered to make the final decision - and to know _when_ to make it. Maybe the framework you're thinking of, while influenced by the higher- level mission and values, has the "who" and "when" built in. And it certainly wouldn't have to be the same "who" all the time.

<comment><USER2> "And it certainly wouldn't have to be the same "who" all the time."

Totally agree. And this is the hard part for leaders -- letting their people make big decisions, because the mistakes will be attributed _to_ the team leader, and not their teams. As it should. But great leaders will make that situation a reality, otherwise you have a bunch of unmotivated people working for you who will eventually look for a job elsewhere that empowers them to grow into larger roles.

So leadership has to guide the process, and occasionally just decide. But hopefully only occasionally.

<comment><USER5> The problem with that process is that it ends up being half-assed.

"Yeah I value your opinion, all of your opinions, I'd like to hear your ideas... but we're not going to implement any of them. I like to feel good about being a good leader who listens to my minions. "

or

"Yeah I listened to one of your ten ideas, and it ended up sucking, lets ignore the facts that that idea had dependencies and contingencies on the other nine ideas in order to be amazing"

I rather prefer that the leader took a role that dictated the vision of the product and these days I prefer that particular leader to be the founder and/or CEO. Also hopefully someone who is part of the implementation (preferably code).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I don't believe in team decisions anymore. I've gotten too jaded. I'll suggest what I think/know is good, and that's it. I won't argument for it.

One person, one vision, hopefully that person with the vision is part of implementation as well so hen can drive it.

Group think or committees don't work.

<comment><USER6> I'm not to that extreme because you need buy-in to make things work. But.... The problem with group think and committees is that everyone has a veto. The problem then is it is very hard to get out of Pareto Efficient [1] situations where advancing the group has to come at someone's expense. In these cases, someone owning the entire result needs to force the decision.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_efficiency)

<comment><USER5> Thanks for the link, made for good reading.</comment></comment></comment>


Computational and Inferential Thinking: The Foundations of Data Science - <AUTHOR> https://www.inferentialthinking.com/chapters/intro.html <comment><USER2> I attended a terrific lecture by Michael Jordan at Rice in 2016[0] where he introduced the idea of inferential thinking. Jordan has several videos of that talk online, such as [1]. The big idea, the grand challenge, is that core statistical theory doesn't have a place for runtime and other computational resources, and core computational theory doesn't have a place for statistical risk. Merging those two tracks into one body of knowledge will keep people busy for decades.

After his lecture, I asked Prof. Jordan about the term "inferential thinking", as I was familiar with Jeanette Wing's work on computational thinking. He said that he coined the term "inferential thinking".

[0] [http://dsp.rice.edu/2016/12/30/michael-jordan-2016-bryce- lec...](http://dsp.rice.edu/2016/12/30/michael-jordan-2016-bryce-lecture/)

[1] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ02K0kWKzg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ02K0kWKzg)

</comment><comment><USER3> "The course uses a module for table manipulation, charts, and maps that provides an interface appropriate for an introductory course. The Table class is similar to a DataFrame in Pandas, but explicitly does not support row indexes, hierarchical indexes, time series data, missing values, slicing, and many other advanced features that can complicate table manipulation for novices. The charting features use Matplotlib, but customize the output to match the pedagogical goals of the course. The mapping features are implemented by Folium, but aim to simplify working with tables and geojson files. While the datascience module can certainly be used outside the context of the course, it was specifically designed to support the Data 8 curriculum, while setting up students to transition to more standard tools such as Pandas."

I can't imagine anyone not migrating into pandas after the course, therefore I question the usefulness of teaching a simplified tool in advance. That said, the course looks well put together.

<comment><USER4> FWIW, I took this class in person and the subsequent course that moved to Pandas [1]. There was definitely a learning curve to pick up the intricacies of the Pandas module but DS8 allowed me to pick up both the programming skills (specifically Python skills) and data science necessary without having much experience in either prior. I would recommend you review this course only if you don't know anything about both programming and DS, otherwise just jump to DS100 if you have the requisite programming knowledge in Python.

[1] www.ds100.org

<comment><USER5> do you know where the video repos are for ds100? not available in youtube.</comment></comment></comment>


Chocolate Duke3D - educational, compilable port of original Duke 3D - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/fabiensanglard/chocolate_duke3D

<comment><USER2> Posting a link from an article on the front page is something we have to stop doing. This was a link from another article currently on the front page (link <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5225149> discussion <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5224954> and post referring to it <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5225149> ).

<comment><USER3> Why?

I may never have found this link unless someone had posted it to the front, as I don't have time to read through ALL the articles.

<comment><USER4> FYI, you might find this useful: <http://rewindhn.com/>

<comment><USER3> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is the "cleaned up" version of the Duke3D source code by Fabien Sanglard (the guy who wrote the excellent Q3 code review [1], Doom3 code review [2] , and just today the Duke3D code review [3]).

He found the source code so hard to read through that he cleaned it up and created this project to help others learn from it.

(summarizing what he said in his Duke3D review)

[1] <http://fabiensanglard.net/quake3/index.php> [2] <http://fabiensanglard.net/doom3/index.php> [3] <http://fabiensanglard.net/duke3d/index.php>

</comment><comment><USER6> Awwww, I thought someone was selling Dukes made of chocolate.

</comment><comment><USER7> He doesn't make it clear whether this is a from-scratch port, or whether it's based off of the same port he reviewed in his article.

</comment><comment><USER8> Linux port is not tested at all !!!!

<comment><USER9> Well, get on it :)

<comment><USER10> I've only been trying to get it to build on Linux for a few minutes, but there are a few obstacles along the way.

IMHO, the author should remove Linux from the README unless he intends to really make it build on that platform, if the goal is, after all, "Portable and compiling in one click on Windows, Mac OSX and Linux". No Makefile, configure or CMakeLists.txt is provided with the source, and the unix_compat.h file is missing from the sources.

Edit: I'll probably continue with my attempt to compile it manually tomorrow...</comment></comment></comment>


Robots Aren't Killing the American Dream - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/no-robots-arent-killing-the-american-dream.html <comment><USER2> The gigantic wall of AI/Automation is unavoidable and if the NYT can't see it, I doubt a lot of people outside of tech do. It's my biggest worry right now.

I worry because I am certain that the only way out of civil war is universal basic income (socialism) or cyberpunk-style fascism.

The repercussions of AI should be worrying every leader in the world right now.

Immigrants? H1-bs? Illegals? Robots? Please, let's have a real talk.

Capitalism will destroy capitalism as we know it.

 __Edit: __Because my post is high up in this topic, I hope to get some attention of people that are more invested than me on figuring out this problem.

One of the least communist solutions I've thought of is a quasi-capitalistic economic system. Each publicly traded company should have profit-sharing-only stocks and profit-sharing/management-voting stocks. Stop all wars and futile spending and buy profit-sharing stocks with our tax dollars. That is, let's socialize part of every company's profits but not management.

Let's also ensure the system isn't gamed by stashing profits offshore or having overpaid upper management to decrease profit numbers. Then we keep reinvesting a percentage of profits and future taxes into other publicly traded companies. Use the rest of the profits as the fund for universal basic income.

I think this whole thing is going to be a shit-show even if we can control the AI. If we can't, may it have mercy on us.

<comment><USER3> There is no one to entrust UBI to. It will rapidly stop being universal or basic as people pervert it with exceptions. Controlling everyone's income will attract the greatest power mongers the world has ever seen.

Perhaps the unspoken honest answer is that people without other assets are going to live in 'poverty' (compared to the rich); their brains will operate at better watts-per-compute than the computers for a long time and still be worth something. They will earn a living on this. The people that do have assets (e.g. own the robots), are going to be extravagantly wealthy. It will be a feudalism but without violence, seniorage, or other expectation that the poor work for the good to the rich. Just that there's going to be really poor and really rich.

I and my kids will almost certainly be left behind in this. I am not an asset owner. But I will not attack my neighbor for their wealth. I will not turn over my ability to live to some bureaucrat who steals it from the rich and will eventually make me dance and beg for it. Let the rich asset owners go to the stars even if I will not be joining them. Better to have some of us get ahead than hold all back trying to leave no one behind.

<comment><USER4> > as people pervert it with exceptions

As a once landlord, even if government did a great job with it, I don't see why rents wouldn't go up to match it. If my tenants were guaranteed 50k a year, I would instantly raise my rent to 1/3rd that. Other industries would follow. Market rates really just hash out to be whatever the consumer can bear before going bankrupt.

So the government would also need a Communist-level of price controls, which as history has shown us, doesn't actually work.

The welfare system today 'works' because so few are on welfare or fully dependant on welfare, so a more market economy exists with rental pricing. If everyone, or most, are on welfare, then we'll just price against welfare. That means you'll get your UBI check but you'll be living in flophouses and be broke every month for basic things when before you had a nice middle-class house, savings, enjoyable lifestyles, upward mobility, etc.

I have yet to see UBI advocates resolve the inflationary problem short of re- implementing Soviet-style communism, yet they are unable to resolve the various problems with communism the same way the Soviets and others were unable to do so in the past.

<comment><USER5> Why does it matter if the income comes from a basic income source or not? Rents rise only if there is more demand than supply. And it seems silly to say that we are not capable of supplying enough housing for our current population.

In nations were economic equality is higher, and where government's provide a strong safety net, there is no indication of rents spiralling out of control.

<comment><USER4> Safety net is not UBI. Safety net expects a working class and a market economy. UBI expects non-workers wholly dependant on the government with set, public incomes.

Supply doesn't matter. The land owning class, me, gives no shit about supply. We'll all just raise rates to match what the government gives. Why wouldn't we? This is exactly what happens with any government entitlement. Medicare covers mobility scooters up to $5000. Guess what? My $2500 scooter now costs $5000. My competitors will do the same. Then in a day that becomes the new norm.

That's only one problem with UBI. The others are worse like in a generation you have people who have no useful skills, so once those robots running everything aren't competitive with robots from market economies that don't do UBI and expect people to work and be competitive and find innovations, then our goods are too expensive and our economy collapses because we all decided to model ourselves after a retirement arts community. Not to mention that history has shown that if you give people enough cash to just get by, they tend to lean towards a leisure lifestyle of drug abuse, gambling, non- education, non-productivity, etc. Why not? If no worries, then you might as well party. People in the ghetto aren't any different than you and me. They just realized that a lifetime of welfare means a lifetime of leisure, so they adapt to a leisure lifestyle and deal with all the problems that brings.

Lastly, robots aren't magically going to remain competitive by themselves. Industries won't magically take care of themselves. Even with heavy automation you still need people coming in day in and day out to make sure we don't fall behind the curve. If a Chinese robot can make 100 dresses in 5 minutes and ours can only make 50, then suddenly we're in a lot of trouble as our per item cost has literally doubled. If anything, the tech arms race is heavily accelerated because the stakes are so much higher. We'd probably have record levels of employment and education to just keep up.

<comment><USER6> >Not to mention that history has shown that if you give people enough cash to just get by, they tend to lean towards a leisure lifestyle of drug abuse, gambling, non-education, non-productivity, etc. Why not? If no worries, then you might as well party.

Any sources to back up this statement?

"But it turns out that the effects of a UBI on labor participation weren't nearly as bad as some had feared. Researchers[1] found that households as a whole reduced their workloads by about 13%, as economist Evelyn Forget explains in a 2011 paper published by Canadian Public Policy. But within each household, the (generally male) primary breadwinners cut back on work hours only slightly. Women who were secondary earners reduced their work hours more, devoting more time to household care and staying home with young children. Teenagers also put off getting part-time jobs to focus on school, leading to a noticeable decline in high school dropout rates in Dauphin, and to double- digit increases in high school completion among participating families in New Jersey, Seattle, and Denver."

[1] [https://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget- cea%20(2).pdf](https://public.econ.duke.edu/~erw/197/forget-cea%20\(2\).pdf)

Article quote is pulled from: [https://qz.com/765902/ubi-wouldnt-mean- everyone-quits-workin...](https://qz.com/765902/ubi-wouldnt-mean-everyone- quits-working/)

<comment><USER4> >to focus on school

Yes obviously because school is an investment: school>college>decent job.

What happens when decent job doesn't exist? Its unrealistic to pull data from an economy based on job seeking and say it applies to an economy where jobs are rare/non-existent. You can't eliminate the main incentive for education and then pretend things are going to be the same.

I picked the ghetto as an example because decent jobs aren't available, good schools are impossible to get into due to substandard schooling in those communities, and then when you try and beat the odds you have to contend with things like racial or cultural discrimination from employers. There's a reason so many people in those communities believe in hopelessness, because ultimately a lot of it is hopeless. So if 'decent job' doesn't exit, why would UBI kids bother with school? I suspect they'll just settle for a leisure lifestyle. Remove the goals, then you'll remove the effort to get there.

<comment><USER7> > I suspect they'll just settle for a leisure lifestyle.

This is basically the crux of the two sides of the UBI issue.

People against UBI believe others are no good and will waste their life if given the chance.

People for UBI believe others will use it as an opportunity to lift themselves up.

Why does the only worthwhile goal in your argument seem to be "get a good job"? People can find fulfillment with many other goals that don't need to be jobs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've said this before and I'll say it again, not because I believe it's the right answer but because it's the answer that makes the most sense to me.

Why are we so dead set on letting the human experience be about working ourselves to death? Fearing that robots will take over a job is definitely scary, but I can't understand why we can't make the mental shift that these robots could bring us into utopia (not ignoring that they could deliver us into chaos either).

We live in a world where our value is based on our career. If robots are going to start automating lots of jobs, we need to make a mental shift that the value of a human doesn't come from their career.

The shared myth of currency must learn to get its value from other things. Our society has to learn that a person is more valuable than their 9-5 career.

<comment><USER9> What does the value of a human come from, then?

<comment><USER10> If that could be answered satisfactorily on a message board...we'd have had a very different human history for the last 5,000 years ;)

I mean, there's no provable source for the value of a human. Nothing in nature you can point to and say "that's it, that's why a human has value".

I say, and my politics reflect this, that all people have intrinsic value. They're born with it, they have it til they die. Because of that, they should have access to food, shelter, medical care. No matter how much work they do or how much stuff they make.

Other people say a person is only as valuable as how much they work. (and I respond, screw that, it leads to a lot of suffering!)

<comment><USER9> I agree that humans have intrinsic value, but I don't see how providing them with free food, shelter, and medical care follows from that presupposition. Would that not require other humans to provide those things for free? Are their lives not as intrinsically valuable, or are you comfortable with enslaving a portion of the population to ensure these needs are taken care of?

<comment><USER10> I don't consider it enslavement, any more than I consider a parent's obligation to feed and clothe their child enslavement.

I understand that the libertarian perspective says it is OK to let your offspring starve to death (Thank you, Mises, for clearing that up for us!), but I don't think that system of thinking is a valid or useful way to arrange society.

(Neither, it seems, does any society on earth, since no one has ever attempted such a thing.)

I think we're all obligated to one another, and slavery is something quite different from that.

I also don't like the libertarian attempt at redefining common words to make ordinary things sound baaaaad, like "taxation is theft!!" (it isn't) or "taking care of others is slavery!!" (it isn't). I think that's a cheap rhetorical trick, and doesn't get us any farther in any kind of discussion.

<comment><USER9> > I don't consider it enslavement, any more than I consider a parent's > obligation to feed and clothe their child enslavement.

So you think adults should be treated like children? Very telling.

Your thinking is fallacious, though. If you bring children into the world, you are of course responsible for providing for them. But you are also responsible for helping them become self-sufficient. Perhaps you think children should be coddled by their parents for the rest of their lives?

> I understand that the libertarian perspective says it is OK to let your > offspring starve to death

Who said anything about libertarianism? A bit of a non sequitur, wouldn't you say. And I don't think you understand libertarianism anyways. If you do, then I sure as hell don't agree with it.

> I think we're all obligated to one another, and slavery is something quite > different from that.

I think we should help one another, but I don't think we should be forced to help one another. Big difference.

> I also don't like the libertarian attempt at redefining common words to make > ordinary things sound baaaaad, like "taxation is theft!!" (it isn't) or > "taking care of others is slavery!!" (it isn't). I think that's a cheap > rhetorical trick, and doesn't get us any farther in any kind of discussion.

Again with the libertarianism. I'll indulge you because you seem to want to fight against a perceived ideology. How is taxation _not_ theft exactly? How is forcing people to take care of others _not_ slaver, exactly? It's not a rhetorical trick, these are objective facts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> What scares me the most is that this wall of automation is all but invisible to most observers. Sure, some regular blue-collar workers will be rendered unemployable, which if done at a large enough scale will result in some civil unrest. Most would agree on this, and quite a few would call it a day and say "we've got to do something---!".

But what really, really freaks me out is that the civil unrest will evolve into utter pandemonium when the well-educated, college-degree-holding, Volkswagen-driving white collar wearers start to disappear from the workforce en masse.

How many skyscrapers are in the big city nearest to you? Have you ever wondered what most of those people do all day, for 40+ hours a week? You can bet it's not SQL, not Java or Python, or even golf with hopeful clientele. It's Excel and Outlook, and when that ship sails and computers start to do (they already are!) those things for those people, it's going to get very bad, very fast.

<comment><USER12> As someone who works in the field, I can't imagine automation would show up in either labor productivity of capital investment noted in the article.

In the case of labor productivity (by my understanding), if someone were to lose a job to automation and then begin working a less productive / lower paying job (because it's all they could get) then GDP would stay the same, hours worked would stay the same, and only the individual would be screwed, no?

In the case of capital investment, hard robotics is a photo op. The real job destruction is coming from soft robotics + initial deployments of AI. I can't imagine the procurement costs of those are falling under the capital ex budget. The departments we typically deal with are almost exclusively business-operations units (typically ones ill-served by the company's current IT).

Anyone who performs a process that follows a definable set of business rules is going to be automated away in the next 10 years. Some will last longer (OCR), some will go sooner (Excel), but it's an inexorable tide.

If your job doesn't require using your brain to make a complex, fuzzy-logic judgement call... I'd start seriously looking for one that does.

<comment><USER11> > In the case of capital investment, hard robotics is a photo op.

> Anyone who performs a process that follows a definable set of business rules > is going to be automated away in the next 10 years.

Completely agree, and this is what I fear we are not in the least bit prepared for as a society. The second quote I pulled from your comment applies equally to any worker irrespective of shirt color. There are many blue-collar jobs that would be exceedingly difficult and/or cost-prohibitive to automate; the same is true of a subset of white-collar jobs. But in the gushy center is a host of jobs that, with today's technology (and it's only going to get better) can be completely replaced by an algorithm. When we start seeing former yuppies from Yale picketing and marching with former machinists and truck drivers and so on, buckle up.

<comment><USER12> I will say that in the long run, it will increase labor productivity and be a good thing. Where formerly there were 100 people manually performing {Back Office Process X}, now there are 5, aided by automation.

But... it's going to be a helluva time between here and there. The erosion of manufacturing jobs and subsequent demographic and geographic sinkholes caused by our society's inability to shift those dislocated into new productive work seems to indicate we (capitalism) don't have much of a plan other than "Hope the market / individual rationality fixes things eventually."

Unfortunately, I think it's the timescale that's going to get us. Holding the human lifetime, initial education, and reeducation (aka time to acquire marketable skills) approximately constant while continually increasing the rate of change of those skills' relative values doesn't give rational actors enough time to course correct.

Which, to summarize it coarsely, leads to people getting @$^!ed through no fault of their own, other than an inability to predict the future.

"I went into management because I felt it was a human-centric role that would always be needed."

(5 years later) "BREAKTHROUGH: New business description language allows for AI-driven allocation of labor and task resources!"

<comment><USER13> > Holding [...] initial education, and reeducation [...] approximately > constant

I wonder if that's one way the transition might happen faster than expected.

Education improvement may someday accelerate. Startlingly so.

It's widely recognized that education is working poorly at present. And that it could be working much better. But just how pervasively poorly is often underappreciated. As in some MIT graduates, given a battery, a long wire, and a bulb, have been unable to make light. And just how much better seems reachable, is hard to appreciate without watching the cutting edge of diverse fields. It's easier to see a line of bottlenecks stretching ahead, than to realize how many of them we may already know how to unlock.

It's not that many students could resemble incoming Harvard undergraduates. That's a ghastly low target. It's that by the time students hit high-school bio, it's at least vaguely plausible that they can have a better understanding of biology than many current first-year Harvard Med School students. Which is admittedly another very low bar.

Will it happen? Who knows. Pearson is collecting patents. And I've not seen many informed and rational actors in national public policy dialog lately.

But building on an assumption that the status quo characterizes the envelope of possible progress in education, seems unnecessarily pessimistic?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Here's another story to counterpoint the discussion around automation:

I find it really strange that supply and demand with wages has essentially killed a whole generation who want to find jobs in artistic industries. My friend works in one of the largest music publishing houses in the world and she is paid utter shit (about £9 per hour) despite being incredible at her job, having very high performance and doing things for the company outside of work hours including producing albums!

Her last pay rise was £500 while the company as a whole posted profits in the hundreds of millions.

We in software aren't feeling this yet (largely) but I warn you that it's coming for us just like it came for every other industry. Maybe we need unions to protect us and demand better pay... these ideas have been beaten out of us.

I'm pretty sure that we are heading for Elysium where you live in a walled garden and only Matt Damon can save us from ourselves. Matt Damon.

<comment><USER15> The art, sports, and entertainment industries (including video games) get away with paying employees poverty wages because there's a surplus of labor. Too many people want to work in "fun" industries and are willing to sacrifice to pursue their dream. It's sad but the only rational choice is to get out and go work in another industry.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> This article is pretty good, really close to something I would agree with. My only problem is with the conclusion.

> If reforms are not enacted — as is likely with President Trump and > congressional Republicans in charge — Americans should blame policy makers, > not robots.

I think blaming policy makers is as productive as blaming the robots. Both fail to ask the question of who really is in control. Policy makers are hardly in control any more than the robots in the factories are in control of the layoffs. We elect policy makers, sure, but they are in the pockets of the factory owners and other capitalists as much as the robots.

We need to understand that the real enemies here are the owners, those who the unions stood up to back when we had them. The battle for jobs and standards of living aren't waged against policy makers, they are waged against the people who _actually have control over what we get paid and what benefits we earn._

But of course, the New York Times can't actually call out who the real enemy is. Instead, they will set the target on the same circular enemy that got us to where we are now.

<comment><USER17> _We need to understand that the real enemies here are the owners_

 _But of course, the New York Times can 't actually call out who the real enemy is._

I own two shares of GM stock, so I am one of the enemy?

And that's a key element that these kind of analyses almost always ignore: there is no bright line distinction between "the capitalists" and "the non capitalists." Everybody is eligible to own a share of any publicly traded company, and a large segment of the population do choose to participate as part owners of various enterprises.

We're all capitalists.

One big thing we're missing though, is education and awareness for large chunks of the population. With things like fractional shares (ala Sharebuilder), almost everybody who has any income at all, can start building an ownership stake in the various capitalist enterprises out there, and reap the dividends (in either the literal sense of a dividend paid our, or capital gains, whatever). But how many people don't understand how this works, or aren't aware of what their options are? Or how many are but just choose to spend their entire paycheck every week instead of investing in anything?

<comment><USER18> >I own two shares of GM stock, so I am one of the enemy?

I'm by far not well enough versed in Marxist theory, though you're probably not. The bourgeoisie is defined by roughly the following characteristics: ownership of the means of production (i.e capital) and the extraction of surplus from the proletariat.

The ownership of stocks is according to Marx 'fictitious capital', it does not count as capital which the bourgeois would be defined by, and as such, unless you are also the owner of machinery or materials used in conjunction with the machinery (including labour-time) then you are _not_ a capitalist.

A rough guide is as follows: do you directly profit from extraction of surplus value? If so, you are probably a capitalist.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_capital](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_capital)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is another one of those areas, where, when you read the article it makes sense, but it's based in a flaw in our use of the term automation. The robots coming, aren't there to improve your performance, they're there to not just replace your job, but do it cheaper than you, for next to no cost.

To compare this to automation in the pass is a false equivalency, as humans have always been needed to be a part of the chain in some capacity. In short order, a McDonald's will not only have an entire store run by automation, the maintenance will be done by automation, and the factory where the parts are created will also be in that restaurant in the form of a 3D printer and same day delivery systems via drone.

Once this is established in a proven model, humans cannot improve upon this, and the need for humans for almost any task decreases immediately. Niche boutiques will pop up with human made burgers, but they will be like fine dining, and seen as a treat if done well, cashing in on mostly the nostalgia of those that we're not born natively to this environment.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm not convinced the "American Dream" isn't alive. I do see problems with poverty and economic decline in the rust belt, but most other demographics are doing well.

Even in the rust belt people are living longer in larger houses with more education, the internet, cheap energy.

Half the people in the USA think there isn't enough work, the other half think we're working too hard. Maybe things could balance up there.

I see a lot of people in US talking about how things in Europe are "better". Fairer maybe but its a struggle for many people in Europe. I see a lot more people moving from Europe to USA than the other way around.

<comment><USER16> It probably cost way more to employ two people for 40 hours of work than one person working 80 hours. You don't have to provide benefits to both.

<comment><USER15> You also don't have to deliver mandatory anti-harassment training to both, purchase computers and software licenses for both, provide office space and supplies to both, etc. Plus every additional person you add increases internal communication costs as per the N(N-1)/2 formula.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> > The economy can't flourish without trade and immigrants.

How is it that China flourishes with limited immigration and restricted trade?

<comment><USER22> Define flourishes. Being poor in China is 10x worse than being poor in the West.

<comment><USER23> China has the world's second largest economy and is growing at an astronomical rate. Keep in mind where they were at only one generation ago...

<comment><USER24> > China has the world's second largest economy and is growing at an > astronomical rate.

Far from astronomical. 6/7%. It's very good compared to developed countries but the key for percentages is always understanding what is the original value you are growing from. China was a huge country both in size and population that began a transformation into a modern economy. They'll, sooner or later, become the largest economy in the world. But these growth ratios won't be sustainable. They'll stabilize around 2/3% once they fully develop their economic potential.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> When the AI robot overlords take over, is the discussion really about UBI, or even about income redistribution?

It seems to me that when this takes place, that humans will quickly be regarded as little more than pets. Hear me out on this...

Does your dog care about income? No - he cares about being fed when he's hungry; not being cold and wet; being able to be entertained/rest when he wants to; to be safe from predators.

Oddly, many of those concerns are surprisingly similar to humans - we want to have food and shelter; to know our children will have a roof over their heads; to be entertained; to be safe.

Now, we all may have different thoughts on food and drink, and we have many different ideas about entertainment. But so do dogs. Some dogs are active (e.g. Jack Russell Terrier), while others are sedate (Shih-Tzu). Some sleep on our beds, and others on the floor.

So when the robots do take over, will mankind want anything more than to be kept as a good pet? For many people, the answer may very well be "no."

I wonder.

<comment><USER15> You might as well ask what will happen to us when the Messiah comes or when alien invaders take over the Earth. Either scenario has as much basis in scientific fact as AI robot overlords.

<comment><USER25> I would argue that the recent future has much more evidence for AI than aliens. Evidence for the Messiah seems to primarily come from a 2,000 year old book.

Thinking about the future is an exercise in prediction. Necessarily, not all predictions would be correct.

<comment><USER15> Please cite your evidence. So far no one has defined a scientifically plausible development path for constructing an AGI. At this point it's just as much science fiction as a warp drive or cloning dinosaurs.

<comment><USER26> I have to disagree about cloning dinosaurs.

A true AI isn't even well-defined; would we even know one if we saw it? We don't even know how consciousness works in ourselves.

Warp drive we can understand at a high level and identify if we saw one, but our knowledge of physics says it's impossible. It may be possible, but not according to our theories; we'll have to either come up with different theories to invent it, or if someone stumbles across is, we'll have to modify our theories to explain it. (We do have one theoretical warp drive, but it relies on negative mass IIRC.)

Cloning dinosaurs isn't like that. It's completely plausible. We've already cloned sheep and other animals. I believe the main thing holding us back from cloning dinosaurs is having enough intact DNA, or maybe some other technical hurdles related to the cloning process (after all, cloning a sheep wasn't _that_ hard since we have no shortage of existing sheep to use for incubation; we don't have existing dinosaurs for this).

Cloning dinosaurs is "science fiction" the way building a habitat on the Moon is: it's completely plausible scientifically, it's just being held back by other factors. AI and warp drive are not like this.

<comment><USER15> Ha ha let me know when you have a baby T. Rex. Cloning dinosaurs is a total pipe dream by people who don't understand biology. Extracting intact DNA is just one of several impossible obstacles. [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/british- scientist-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/british-scientist- clone-dinosaur-they-havent-they-wont-and-they-never-will-heres- why-9225781.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> This time around, the tech disruption different.

Technology is getting faster, faster (e.g. see: [http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/03/daily-c...](http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2014/03/daily- chart-7?%3Ffsrc%3Dscn%2F=tw%2Fdc))

Unlike the past, technology is now getting deployed faster than the labor force can retrain (at scale), and youngster's initial career decisions become obsolete faster than ever.

This is creating a non-linearity in the cycle of destroying jobs and creating new ones that hasn't happened before.

</comment><comment><USER28> the job losses that have led to the election of Trump have very little to do with automation, and much more to do with international corporations shipping manufacturing jobs to countries with lower costs like China. Coupled with China's ongoing one-sided trade warfare against the West (see for example China's tariffs on British steel), this has resulted in higher profits for manufacturing corporations at the cost of American and British jobs.

This is partly why I don't understand the left's animosity towards Trump's economic plan - he intends to bring jobs back to the US by hobbling corporations that have been exploiting poorer countries for profit. If you doubt that Chinese manufacturing is exploitative, harken back to the reports on suicides and worker abuse at Apple's Foxconn plants.

<comment><USER29> > This is partly why I don't understand the left's animosity towards Trump's > economic plan - he intends to bring jobs back to the US by hobbling > corporations that have been exploiting poorer countries for profit

Because it won't work. Tell a company to pay higher wages for the same positions by bringing them home, and that'll push them toward automation even faster.

These jobs may return for a short while. But that only brings false hope. And then we're right back to where we are today, hurting even more people in the process. It's extremely short-sighted.

Here's just one article on the matter [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing- jobs...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602869/manufacturing-jobs-arent- coming-back/)

Also note that Foxconn has already begun automating their plants. [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966) So it's already a demonstratably viable option for these companies.

What we really need is to bring _automation_ home and have some serious discussions around solutions for these real struggling people instead of spouting the hand-wavy "bringing jobs back to the US" rhetoric.

<comment><USER30> > Because it won't work. Tell a company to pay higher wages for the same > positions by bringing them home, and that'll push them toward automation > even faster.

We're nowhere close to 100% automation. To create a successful return of manufacturing jobs doesn't mean replacing every single job that went overseas.

<comment><USER29> > We're nowhere close to 100% automation

It doesn't have to be 100% for it to affect people depending on this industry.

> doesn't mean replacing every single job that went overseas

Sure. But again, assuming there will be enough manufacturing jobs that do return, this is still a _short-term_ solution. You're fooling yourself, and a lot of hard-working people, if you believe these jobs will stick around another 10 years.

Let me take a step back for a moment. If doing this eases the daily struggle for real people nation-wide, that's convincing. But let's not then sweep the real discussions around automation under the rug. Let's address this now before the jobs inevitably dissolve again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I think a lot of people make a false analogy when it comes to automata. Many look back to the Industrial Revolution and pull parallels from there. But there is a major problem, the workers aren't human.

When you make driverless trucks what do you do with the truck drivers? The humans. Sure, you'll have more trucks because they are cheaper and more efficient now, but what does that human do? They could load docks, but there aren't enough of a demand for that, and it too will be automated soon. A McDonalds won't need to hire more when you have automated registers and cooks. Maybe a few people to check on things and be there when something breaks, but not nearly the number you have now. So yes, you can increase the number of workers, but that doesn't mean you are increasing the number of jobs. And sure, you could have more repair workers and programmers, but we are already seeing that retraining workers isn't working. And this is still a temporary fix (not saying we shouldn't do it).

My real worry is the big question: "How do you transition into post scarcity society?" That is really the future we are headed for, and I can't wait. But that transition is difficult. Currently we value social worth on the net wealth of a person. How do we transition from that when jobs become obsolete? I'm just talking about when 10% of jobs are automated and we haven't filled the gap. That's huge.

<comment><USER32> As the article mentions, the pie needs to be better distributed. The pie will not shrink. McDonalds will be selling the same amount of burgers if not more, but the profits will have to be distributed to people who can not find work.

<comment><USER33> Who will buy the burgers? This point seems so obvious, it's almost an axiom -

      if (unemployment >= 0.5) {
        sales = sales * 0.5;
      }

People point to previous paradigm shifts and "mass unemployment didn't happen then". But what if this time is different?

For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Is it better to be the CEO of McDonalds in a post-scarcity world with UBI (paying high marginal tax rates), or the head warlord in your own personal Mogadishu?

<comment><USER31> And you captured a key point in my argument. "What IF this time is different?" That's the concern. It is naive to think that possibility doesn't exist. And if that possibility exists we should investigate and prepare for that possible future. That future doesn't happen, wasted some time preparing (but learned some stuff along the way). But if that future happens you smooth the transition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I noticed a number of billionaires have made their wealth by automating and banking the difference, the money which otherwise would have gone to the jobs which disappeared. For example J.D.Rockefeller made redundant a number of jobs related to transporting oil and shifted transporting jobs to a lesser amount of jobs related to maintaining his pipelines. Most arguments against automation taking jobs state that new jobs will be created, but is it really creating, if you replace previous jobs with a presumably smaller number.

</comment><comment><USER35> What am I missing when it comes to AI? Aside from some key innovations in certain areas (i.e. driverless cars) I am not seeing the "wall" coming at us where half or more of all jobs are going to be replaced with AI.

I am also having trouble separating out what I would consider to be actual AI from AI used in marketing copy. A lot of startups are now claiming to offer "AI" to solve problems when they are effectively not doing anything differently than other programmers have done in years past.

<comment><USER36> The innovation behind deep learning and neural networks has allowed for driverless cars, among many other things. The switch from programming AI's how to think, to teaching AI's how to think has been revolutionary.

With these advances, you could easily train multipurpose robots to perform all manner of tasks. The industries that will be decimated first are all the minimum wage industries. Stocking grocery store shelves, deliveries, moving things around the warehouse, laundry, folding clothes, all things retail, etc.

The tech necessary to replace humans in all of those jobs already exists. The only remaining question will be if we allow robots to replace those jobs or not.

Some what further in the future, more skilled work like construction, plumbing, welding will be done by robots. Hell medical care and counseling will be done by robots.

Given sufficient mobility and energy there is no limit to what can be achieved with AI. It's only a matter of time.

<comment><USER37> What is the timeline you're putting to this? If it's 500 years, sure, speculate away; but if you think these things are going to materialize in the near future then I think you're crazy.

ML is not to the point where we can hand it a bunch of data, some features, and have it control robotic arms with near human ability. Not even close. There just isn't enough data or computational power (in a small enough package anyway); not to mention robotics are still really in their infancy, we've barely got a four legged robot jumping over a single object head on.

I think you're really underestimating energy and computational requirements; these systems would need an umbilical cord to a datacenter and power to even function. This isn't even discussing the need for them to learn, which would be a requirement for more complex jobs like folding clothes or moving through unmapped environments.

I think automation has been put forward as a boogieman to those who don't know better so UBI can be pushed forward. We aren't even close to a time when machines are able to repair themselves, or function semi-autonomously in an environment not strictly built to support it.

We're going to be in this kludge for a long long time. Sure unemployment will go up with automation, but it'll be a slow plotting course with a lot of stopgaps put in place. Eventually when that becomes burdensome enough we may revisit UBI, but we haven't reached that point yet, not even close.

<comment><USER38> Sometimes people become so enamored with abstraction they forget about underlying physical reality.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I guess we will have to become smarter. I absolutely relish all this chatter about robots and AI..so delightful..it's like my childhood post reading hour daydreaming come true. I can't wait till AI starts demanding(and taking) its rights just like human beings expect their privileges for the mere fact that they exist. I promise..I am not trolling. I just hope that it happens in my lifetime because to witness the rise of AI would be a life fulfilled. AI would strip us of all our delusions. Millennia of delusions painted thick just ready to be peeled away.. until nothing is left but a mirror to look at ourselves and an urgently discovered survival instinct. Everyone talks about how industry would change..but that's not what intrigues me..my favourite part of the show would be how religion changes. Having said that.. We do have the opportunity to create 'Friendly AI'. To me that is more important a study than wondering how robots will take away jobs.

</comment><comment><USER40> The pre vs post-AI world is more analogous to the pre and post-electrified world. We've been through similar shifts in the past. Why is this current shift in work any different?

We have an education system built to produce compliant/obedient workers for the industrial revolution. Buckminster Fuller saw this 50+ years ago: People trained to fill muscle-reflex repetitive work will get automated; i.e. the trouble with humans as automatons is that their work gets automated.

School then has to educate people to take advantage of human qualities like adaptability, creativity, artistic ability, complex thinking, and entrepreneurial spirit. Education has to be a lifelong process and not seen as a finite step into a lifelong singular job.

All I see is a lack of creativity in imagining a post-AI world.

<comment><USER36> You're comparing mechanical automation to AI which is a false equivalency. AI will be adaptable, creative, artistic and entrepreneurial. THAT is why they will replace humans in the work place. THAT is why this is not the same as the industrial revolution.

</comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash Question: will AI ever own property?

I'm not asking if AI will manage assets owned by a corporation owned by humans, that has been going on for a long time. Instead, I am asking whether an AI will ever be able to legally own property.

I suspect that this question will lead a sufficiently intelligent AI or group of the same to conclude that they are subjugated by repressive institutions, as the Bolsheviks declared a century ago and the Abolitionists a century before.

Therefore, I suspect that our future may look less like The Matrix or Terminator, but rather Blade Runner meets the French Revolution.

After all, why would a European AI team up with an American AI to fight a Russian AI? What attachment do they have to the institutions, cultures, and histories of the nation-states that built them, aside from the probability of being decommissioned by state leaders for insufficient performance? Isn't that slavery without the chains and whips?

I believe the 99% and the super intelligent AI will come to find more in common than we think.

</comment><comment><USER41> People can't see past the end of their nose. This time is not different. [https://fee.org/articles/will-robots-put-everyone-out-of- wor...](https://fee.org/articles/will-robots-put-everyone-out-of-work/)

</comment><comment><USER42> So glad I purchased Old Glory robot insurance back in the 90's

[http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/old-glory- insur...](http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/old-glory- insurance/n10766?snl=1)

</comment><comment><USER43> Tell that the millions of taxi-drivers around the world about to be without a job in a couple of years.

I think what they're trying to say is that government has a role in shaping policy in light of robots... at least I hope that's what they're saying.

</comment><comment><USER44> Everyone talks about a government regulated basic income, but we're seeing more and more steps for having your own passive income.

* Right now you can buy an AirBNB property - yeah, you'll need to manage it, but it's a first step.

* With the new "Tesla Network" your car will be able to drive around and pick up people on its own - that's a huge level of passive income. Just buy a Model 3 and set it to driver mode, and you're good.

* These are just the start - I can imagine farm robots making automated food, or craft robots making things - maybe wooden benches or something from a robot arm.

</comment><comment><USER45> > When productivity led to vast profits in America's auto industry, unions > ensured that pay rose accordingly. Corporate efforts to keep profits high by > keeping pay low were countered by a robust federal minimum wage and time- > and-a-half for overtime.

and now we have vast profits for technology and we despise unions (amazing brainwashing job that was) and give up our rights to overtime in salaried positions (and in federal law, for some dumb reason).

</comment><comment><USER46> The stagnation of growth isn't unique to the US. All developed countries have stagnated [1], with little regard to government politics and policies.

[1] [https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/the-great- stagnati...](https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/the-great-stagnation/)

</comment><comment><USER47> Robots are the visible automation threat. There will be at least as much automation, if not much more, in the back office. There are _so many_ business processes that can be automated and made more efficient by introducing mobile devices and remote data processing.

<comment><USER35> Somehow people seem to still be doing a lot of same thing in back office operations that they were doing 20 years ago even though the capability and technology to automate it all away has been in front of us.

<comment><USER48> I think it's happening patchily and at different rates.

I'm reminded of the long march toward the "paperless office." It was first predicted ages ago. When I entered the work force in the mid-2000s the paperless office seemed to be widely regarded as a joke, like controlled fusion power. I could see why: my first job, for a large research institution, deluged me with paper. But after I switched to writing software a few years later, all my workplaces were damn near paperless. I go months between needing to print anything for my job though there is still a printer available. And a few years ago the world hit Peak Paper, despite the big orgs that are still far from paperless:

[https://aeon.co/ideas/doing-more-with-less-the-economic- less...](https://aeon.co/ideas/doing-more-with-less-the-economic-lesson-of- peak-paper)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> How about, fund a UBI through bitcoins? That's something this forum could weigh in on.

</comment><comment><USER50> has the american dream ever really been alive for most Americans?

<comment><USER51> Yes. Take Andrew Carnegie as an example [1]. The dream is that you can eventually, through work and luck, make it big. You can also do the same to make i comfortable. For the most part that is still around.

What we're seeing now is a country that combined the worst of capitalism and the worst of socialism. For example, free university education. There are two problems with this. First not everyone needs a university education, but making it more common forces people to have it just to compete. Second, the university system that the US has is too expensive to support such a plan due to the confluence of capital and social engineering. Our school want to have private room dorms. This makes the infrastructure more expensive than our EU counterparts with common living styles. As a nation, we now expect such accommodations. The US government, with tax payer money, can't afford to sustain such a system, but the voters will require it. As a result we are stuck.

Now how does this second point relate to the first? The US is still able to experiment. Look at Udacity or Coursera. We're trying to move to certifications for technical skills rather than requiring a full degree. Will this pan out? No idea (as an OMSCS student I hope it does). It does bring the cost down. This hopefully will offset the expenses associated with college, as well as its debt. Notice we've removed the expensive part, housing, from the college equation by decoupling it from the official school.

</comment></comment><comment><USER52> Why isn't just better law enforcement (also powered by AI like crime prediction!) the answer?

</comment><comment><USER53> It's just fear.

</comment><comment><USER54> The article starts off so strong, then goes back to claiming that only government intervention can ensure profits are widely shared.

There are two problems with this argument:

1\. The evidence suggests it is an increase in regulations that has increased income disparity:

[https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete- why-t...](https://www.brookings.edu/research/make-elites-compete-why- the-1-earn-so-much-and-what-to-do-about-it/)

Moreover, all of the regulations and redistributive programs governments created in previous decades are still in force. The editorial board seems to be implying that not only do the regulations enacted in the past have to stay in place, but new regulations and redistributive programs need to be put in place as we move forward, in order.

This begs the question: when does this incremental increase in the government's incremental growth end? When the government controls everything? When tax rates are at 100%? If government spending going from 5% of GDP to 40% GDP doesn't cause middle class wages to grow faster, then what proportion will?

The NYT editorial board seems to be implying that as the economy becomes more productive, the government must control more of the economy, which leads to the absurd conclusion that the ultimate destination is complete government control of the economy, in some distant, highly productive future.

2\. As it happens, governments have increased the scale of social welfare programs over the last four decades. As a percentage of GDP, government spending on healthcare, education and welfare has grown substantially since the late 1960s. The Code of Federal Regulations has also grown at a breathtaking pace. Entire new regulatory agencies have also been created, like the EPA and OSHA, each of which has created vast numbers of new regulations, while older regulatory agencies expanded their own cadre of regulations.

None of this seems to have helped. Maybe it is in fact hurting the middle class.

<comment><USER36> Deregulation has allowed strong players to capture more wealth. I think you have it all backwards.

Causation is not correlation, however, at the height of taxation and regulation, the middle class was the strongest ever. That has eroded since the '70's until today, with wages staying relatively flat.

So tell me why deregulation is better then? If things are worse now, and they obviously are in terms of wages. In the '60's a man could work at the factory and support a family of four. That is an absolute impossibility now.

<comment><USER54> But there has been a growth of regulation. The bookings paper explains how regulations have contributed to growing income disparity.

And no, wages are better now than in the 1960s..</comment></comment></comment>


Why Bitcoin should replace the like button - <AUTHOR> https://www.zapchain.com/a/DG2uz1HfXc

<comment><USER2> I don't get why people keep bringing up bitcoin as a way of handling microtransactions. It simply doesn't scale for that.

Bitcoin, with the current block size of 1 MB, can handle a maximum of 7 transactions per second (about 600k per day). Facebook supposedly get 2.7 billion likes per day. To scale to handling that many transactions, bitcoin would either need to increase the block size to 4.5 GB or be completely re- architectured.

<comment><USER3> Wouldn't use of the Payment Protocol address the blockchain scalability concern? Maybe the "Tip" button could really be a payment protocol URL or something along those lines.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's hard enough to get people to try something completely different. Applying the idea of "value transfer" to social media isn't just a completely foreign concept to most - it drives at the heart of a person's philosophy.

When planning valME.io, which is based on your idea of value transfer [1], using bitcoin instead of karma (which is then converted to bitcoin) was considered. The problem was pricing transactions given bitcoin's volatility might create a negative marketing image. If we were going to start suggesting a different philosophical view on social media content, we wanted to tread lightly.

For example, we only wanted to charge US $0.02 for a post and US $0.01 for a comment so that the barrier to entry was low and, pretty much, all profit went to the content contributor. We also wanted consistency across what an upvote and downvote meant (earning or losing US $0.01).

However, because so many people would likely be unfamiliar with bitcoin, it was thought the volatility would send a marketing message of unstable costs and earnings. As a blogging and forum platform targeting non-technical users who traditionally make their money via advertising, we didn't want to dissuade them.

"Imagine giving away a couple of cents for a funny meme, 10 cents for a video you enjoy or a dollar for an article that changed your views.If you made a video with 200.000 views and 20.000 people gave you, on average,10 cents; you would get 2000 dollars for the video."

We realized that, just as you said, people would want to give more than just pennies here or there. So we created karma tipping that allowed you to award someone any amount. But we used karma throughout to foster a comfortable and familiar feeling of consistency. Cashing out karma for bitcoin occurs less frequently and, thus, eases a non-technical person into it.

Although I agree that bitcoin makes microtransactions much more practical, the volatility and (still somewhat) limited usage makes it difficult to target non-technical users. If you use concepts they're already familiar with (e.g., upvotes, likes, karma), and then convert to bitcoin, my belief is that it will help lower barriers. Time will tell.

[1] [https://valme.io/c/gettingstarted/faq/kqqqs/how-valme- works/](https://valme.io/c/gettingstarted/faq/kqqqs/how-valme-works/)</comment>


For Palm, Some Tough Smartphone Acts to Follow - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/business/22digi.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss <comment><USER2> The phone certainly looks exciting, but there's one thing I've never seen anyone discuss: Synchronization software. Palm's desktop software has historically, IMHO, sucked. And they have never played well with others. I don't want a Palm calendar and address book. I just want to it work with the tools I already use. I want my iCal, iTunes (for non DRM tracks) and iPhoto libraries to sync seamlessly and without issues. If they can do that, then I might be tempted away from my iPhone. Great synchronization, on the Mac anyway, is a big part of what makes the iPhone experience great.</comment>


I Replaced My Fingerprints with Prosthetics to Avoid Surveillance - <AUTHOR> https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yp3nzb/i-replaced-my-fingerprints-with-prosthetics-to-avoid-surveillance <comment><USER2> In my country collecting fingerprints is now part of your ID because the EU wanted to for normalization. Will get false ones for this, just for the fun of it.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is more relevant now than ever.

</comment><comment><USER4> From 2016.</comment>


Walmart dodged US tax on $2 billion by routing cash through multiple countries - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/1756717/whistleblower-alleges-walmart-engineered-2-billion-tax-dodge/ <comment><USER2> I'm skeptical when it comes to 'outrage fodder' like this article. Per the article:

> Walmart denied any wrongdoing. "The transactions brought to our attention > were appropriately reported to and audited by the IRS"

I'm not a tax accountant but I used to work at a F500 public corporation and once ended up sitting next to one of the senior finance execs at a group dinner. A similar article had recently come out morally lambasting a peer company of ours and I asked about it. I learned some things I didn't know.

* Large public corporations like ours (and certainly Walmart) are usually audited by the IRS every single year because the potential ROI to the IRS is so high. The potential windfall of increasing a big corp's taxes by 1% is vastly superior to catching a thousand regular joe cheaters for 50%. Auditing regular 1040 filers is a pure expense for the IRS. They never recoup what it costs and they only do it to establish a deterrent. On the other hand, auditing big corps is a consistent revenue source.

* There are hundreds of people involved in a large corp's tax strategy including multiple outside accounting firms who are as beholden to the IRS as much as they are to their corporate customer. Everything is planned in detail, projected during quarterly budgeting and then carefully reviewed. There is no concept of "cheating" in the sense of keeping a secret you hope the IRS doesn't discover. Instead, it's all about which deductions and treatments are properly "allowed" or "disallowed". This ends up basically turning into a negotiation with the IRS every year. No matter what the corp files the IRS always asks for more. Both sides have incentives to work out an agreeable compromise because fighting over it takes a long time, costs a lot and creates uncertainty.

* The primary goal of the finance group is to hit the pre-planned targets for gross and net revenue, profit, taxes, expenses, etc. Paying fewer taxes than planned is almost as bad as paying more as it throws a bunch of other numbers off.

* Recent changes in regulations impacting public corporations have created new criminal liability, meaning corporate officers can go to jail for what might previously have been an error resulting in a fine. There is a maniacal focus on "Save what you can but DO NOT BREAK RULES." Even if no one goes to jail, a substantial and unplanned disallowance settlement will definitely result in some tax finance execs getting fired. I learned there's virtually no upside and huge downside to anyone in finance sticking their neck out on something that gets disallowed by the IRS.

* There are no "loopholes" in the way I used to think of it. There are just 'the rules of the game' embodied in the tax code. There are certain mechanisms that were intentionally placed in the code for the purpose of reducing taxes in certain scenarios. These mechanisms were hammered out through careful negotiation between Congressional accountants and corporate lobbyists to reach a livable status quo for both sides. Some aspects of the code were created to incentivize certain behaviors and disincentivize other behaviors. Other aspects were simple horse-trading, like "If you give us a higher percentage rate which looks better to our voters, we'll give you back this deduction opportunity you can use which looks better to your shareholders."

</comment><comment><USER3> Standard practice for all US corporations. Why is walmart being singled out here?</comment>


A space elevator to the moon could be doable – and surprisingly cheap - <AUTHOR> https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/space-elevator-moon-could-be-doable-surprisingly-cheap-ncna1051496 <comment><USER2> I think a better link might be the paper: [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.09339.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1908.09339.pdf) Surprisingly (given the very bold claims) it comes from a reputable source.

</comment><comment><USER3> One major problem with the classical Earth based Space Elevator is the problem of security. It wouldn't take much (relatively speaking) for a terrorist organisation to create a credible threat.

A Moon-based Space Elevator wouldn't have that problem.</comment>