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It's a juvenile article Dan. Your censure is unjust in my opinion.

This article kind of reminds me of when a report was due in 7'th grade and I didn't really want to do it.

I'd just look up a bunch of stuff and reword it and jam it all together with no real thesis or point. It always passed.

Who wants to drink a beer that had a ball in it that had been rolling around on the floor?

Beer pong is just dumb all the way around even as a freshman in college.

I did notice the org has raised $650K from a variety of sources.

It might be interesting to see the ideological bent of the source of that funding. But I'm guessing it probably isn't oil drillers and Jesus in public school promoters.

Each potential voter decides if they are informed enough. Or at least interested enough. And the two probably go together.

Much of the time the smartest people don't actually do the best. High IQ isn't a guarantee of high achievement.

And _that_ is the real value of media. Advertising always was a side business.

If you trace the root cause of why people are in prison I bet in most cases poverty is a large part.

When will we stop and realize keeping people indefinitely in poverty only makes life worse for everyone? The people behind these kind of schemes are morally more criminal than many of those who are incarcerated. Preying on defenseless or down and out members of society for financial gain is about as low as you can go.

If indeed it's gone one year to the day later.

That probably depends on who you ask.

The point is we already live in that dystopian future. But it isn't machines running things. It's people fighting over scraps. I firmly believe the machines will do better.

So if we don't widen roads because people might have to move then we get more accidents. Or the city can't grow. Or people sit in traffic for extra hours a day.

People's needs need to be taken into account, yes, that is what it is all about in the end.

But a few people's inconvenience or greed outweighing the general progress is not a long term formula for successful society.

Maybe not all governance is possible by algorithm but much of it is.

For instance, where do we widen a road? Absolutely an algorithmic problem. But I suspect sometimes these types of decisions have more to do with contributions, political favors, relations, etc.

Solving even part of this type of friction in society would go a long way toward improving life for the general population.

Bring on the A.I. I'd rather be governed by a machine than a party boss and a lobbyist any day.

Nope. No exaggeration. I've known probably 30+ farmers in 4 or 5 states (and even worked for a few) and many have attitudes exactly as I state

It's not that they were bad people or unkind (although some are... bordering on abusive), but it's the attitude of inherited big landowner. It absolutely exists.

In retrospect I suppose "spoiled" (in the sense a gulf state prince might be) probably isn't the right term. Every farmer I've known has worked hard and paid attention to their task. But the attitude I speak of is pervasive. The landed nobility and the little people. At least in my experience. And I found it unpleasant.

Partially agree. I do happen to think the cartoon raises a very valid point.

But... having known a lot of farmers they are indeed usually quite well off. And many of them are not aweshucks salt of the earth types people often perceive, but rather more like a sort of spoiled generational semi-duke or noble type thing looking down upon the little non-land owning commoners who they often pay very little and sometimes wantonly abuse.

That being said.. what was the guy thinking? He has to know who financially supports the paper. Maybe he was ready to do something else.

The prevention to this type of problem is probably the same measure needed to fix many forestry problems.

Regular fires.

But now we have homes right up to the forest and no one wants to look at charred land for two decades. So I suppose it's still a no go. The thing about fire though is eventually it probably happens anyway.

It stands to reason. Centralized bureaucracy is centralized bureaucracy.

What was it said about the Soviet Union? That they pretended to pay people and the people pretended to work? Well.....

No, central economic planning has traditionally been viewed as disastrous.

Doesn't mean it "is" or "always will always be".

In fact, you undoubtedly live to some extent under the auspices of some form of central economic planning right now. Why? Because at some point it was realized complete lack of central economic planning is disastrous.

But you are really arguing against government controlled rent prices no? I tend to probably agree in most cases.

The Ruger 10/22 has been in production a long time.

I have one that was a gift for my 12'th birthday. I'm 45.

Some of the most useful things I've written have been the simplest.

In fact, I'd say there is a pretty strong correlation between simplicity and usefulness (for some reason).

You don't necessarily need a heavy framework to make a useful app.

That's pretty funny.

I think the point is for complex UI applications (or a team with interchangeable members) you would use a framework. But for less complex applications you might very well not.

Enjoyed this article. I like JavaScript, I use it almost daily, I'd like to learn React or Angular but just haven't had the real need. For the amount of JavaScript in the apps I build there just doesn't seem to be the payoff. I did venture into npm. What a nightmare of goop and time wasting. Although there were some cool utilities the amount of time setting up and dealing with in most cases didn't really pay out.

Don't manipulate the DOM. Why not? Works fine for what I do. Maintainability. Maybe. But well organized code is well organized. If there were a lot more of it this probably becomes a valid point but JS doesn't do everything in my apps. It does the things JS was originally designed to do.

I figure when the dust settles I'll probably dive into a framework. But right now stored database procedures, database triggers, a light Flask/Bottle layer and judicious use of well organized jQuery/ native JS works really well and doesn't have a bunch of unneeded parts.

Then again I'm still using Slackware. I like things simple. The less abstraction and "helpfulness" between me and what I'm trying to get done the better. Simple, powerful, modifiable tools without a lot of glitz and overhead are my preference. I mistrust black boxes and complexity. Maybe React is the kind of tool that could be useful... don't know. Might look into at some point when I feel it's reached puberty.

Pointing out a likely bias does bring objectivity into question.

A big part of the problem is always corruption. But can machines plan for an entire economy?

If you could really direct things on a massive scale that could work.

But I fear each little piece will scream bloody murder if it's cheese gets cut off and it becomes feasibly impossible to do what needs to be done.

Well to be fair "the whole" isn't fully visible yet so we don't actually know the plain truth. Maybe trade deals are better for everyone overall. Maybe they aren't.

Maybe they have sustainably and permanently lifted millions of people out of poverty and it's a long term step forward on the path to a better life for everyone. Or maybe they have served to increasingly concentrate capital into fewer and fewer hands to the point the entire world will be eventually perpetually enslaved with no path out and this causes very bad things for the human race to happen. Not to mention the destruction of culture (or is this a positive? I never know) and destruction of ecosystems (I'm pretty sure this isn't a positive).

The point is, we don't know the full story yet. The jury is still out. But I'm always wary of concentrated power. Distributed power seems to produce much more good IMOP.

SF isn't the entire country. True.

Large swathes of the country it is very difficult to find any work at all. Never mind work with pay one can exist on.

Ya, well I'd rather be safe than feel safe.

no-one says "I wish we never introduced tractors"

The Amish?

Back up and ask why you should want to learn. People sometimes assume we should all be learning everything but the reality is we can't and we won't. So we need to focus.

I've seen a lot of people that flit around and start this and that or take an online class but then never build anything with the technology. After a year or two they are pretty much no better off for the effort than if they had used the time to drink beer at the beach.

So my philosophy is now to spend a small amount of time investigating. How useful is this to myself or an employer? How interesting it? How much time and effort is going to be required to learn this well enough to work it? If it's more than I'm willing to put out or the thing has limited use or interest then I don't even bother. I know it's there if I want to come back later. But if I'm not going to learn it to the point it becomes a useful tool I generally don't bother starting.

I have found that half efforts are about half the effort of a full effort but they don't produce half the results. So they are by in large a waste of time and energy.