maratd

Your point is absolutely valid, but there is no reason why the same doesn't apply to this new scheme as well. You would need to distribute the money and the same distribution problems apply. People are people.

Give everybody $1k? Who's everybody? If you're in this country illegally, do you get $1k? What about people who got stranded here due to border closures? How are you going to identify people? How will you stop fraud, double dipping, etc?

Maybe instead of creating a new bureaucracy in the middle of a crisis, use the existing systems that are already in place and just pump more cash into them?

> charities, welfare, churches, synagogues, etc.

All of those things have displayed discrimination against groups they don't like in the past, or have an overt or covert missionary agenda.

The welfare office discriminates against groups they don't like? It has an overt missionary agenda? This is news to me.

People working many hourly jobs net less than $1,000 per month and cannot afford to take unpaid time off.

Absolutely and those people should receive assistance through the regular channels we have available. Unemployment, charities, welfare, churches, synagogues, etc. and frankly, good old fashioned neighborly assistance.

Not by throwing money at everybody, most of whom do not need it. That's just redistribution of wealth by another means. Don't shove your political agenda down people's throats in the middle of a pandemic.

I think this is a profoundly bad idea. It's just as dumb as the fed trying to prop things up. You're not going to solve this problem with money, but with a strong response to the root cause, the pandemic. That said ...

My wife and I have a newborn, which currently isn't very expensive but we all still need to eat

I imagine you would get $3k since there are 3 of you.

Again you're hyperbolizing.

I am not.

The outright toxic projects that developers and city leaders routinely propose run at a least a couple of orders of magnitude above 0.01 percent.

This is true, but does not contradict my point. How many tiny projects are never run through anything or even considered because regular people don't have a mountain of cash/lawyers/etc. and simply comply with the law, while all those toxic projects hire lawyers to get variances?

How many two-family homes are never built or even considered because the zone is one-family? How many housing units have we lost this way?

for example, a major trash incineration facility on a plot of land in the middle of your quiet residential neighborhood

We can either chat about the 0.01% of scenarios ... or the other 99.99%. The other 99.99% look extremely similar ... it's towns not allowing two-family homes in one-family zones. Three-family homes in two-family or one-family zones. We're not even talking about apartment buildings. All of those are built using "variances", which just illustrate how absurd the system is.

Oh and speaking about your example? I live in a two-family home in a two-family zone ... next to a bus depot. How you ask? Well, they just got a variance I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

And your plan for achieving that number is - what precisely?

Ease up on the zoning laws. Many zoning laws in that same metro area prohibit high density housing. The same high density housing that is most profitable and reduces the cost of housing.

That's like saying "anyone who learns about the world is a scientist".

That's exactly what a scientist is? At least if they're using the scientific method to learn about the world.

This sort of what-about-ism doesn't address the core point. That top-down command and control systems are vulnerable to precisely this type of outcome. Providing a single western example of a much milder localized circumstance doesn't address anything except deflect attention from the main point.

Flint was a local event. This is consuming all of China.

Corporations are a thing.

Corporations aren't a thing. They're a legal construct. They're owned by shareholders, who are mostly institutional investors ... pension funds, 401k, etc ... everyday people. So you will be taxing everyone. The same people who already pay income taxes on their earnings. And that's assuming they don't just pass the additional cost down via increased prices on whatever it is they produce.

If you want to tax the wealthy, this is not the way to do it.

To add to this, only those who are actively seeking work and are not employed, are considered unemployed. A retired person (or a person who has given up looking for work) is not counted as unemployed, but will be counted once employed.

You should be flexible enough to bill in whatever manner that works best for the work at hand, the client, and most importantly, yourself. If the job requires hourly billing, don't pass it up because "I don't bill hourly". With some clients, you simply won't get them past that and it's up to you to make it work anyway, for both of you.

I agree, you should push clients away from hourly billing, but sometimes it's not possible and it's not worth losing an opportunity over.

You can propose to "sell" a fixed number of hours every two weeks or month, then allocate those hours when you estimate, without forcing you to keep a timer open while you work.

Yes, it's a compromise, you're not selling value, but you're not exactly selling time either and you have sufficient incentive to be productive.

Please let's not pretend that there is an infinite amount of opportunities out there and it's just a matter of your grabbing the right one. You need to keep money rolling in every month and you take what's in front of you, making the best of it.

There are two levels of organization. Time level (which projects when, meetings, sprints, time allocation) and project level (user stories).

For the time level stuff, I use Google Calendar. This allows me to plan development work for the various projects around any meetings that end up on my calendar.

For the project level stuff, I use JIRA in kanban format with Blocked, Backlog, In Progress, For Review, Done.

I've been doing it this way for more than a decade ...

Works ok but I feel I can do better, like adding a progress % or something to get a better overview of my tasks.

JIRA will give you a burn-down chart automatically, but honestly, that stuff is worthless.

One piece of advice. Do not kick back user stories unless there was a defect in the work. If you want to add something or do something differently, make a new story and mark that one as done. It kills morale to see the same stuff over and over again, makes it look like you're not making progress.

Wrong trilogy =) I was talking about https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07N32K12H/ref=ppx_yo_dt...

Unless you assume each solar system is a threat, so you proactively send automated machines to each solar system that can adapt to the threat as needed. They might also not care if there is or isn't life there and just want to build Dyson spheres everywhere.

Also Winter World (and the other two books in the trilogy). Fun read. Very similar in style to the The Expanse.

As an engineer, it's tough to get past this mindset.

Seems that way considering how you're being downvoted. A shame.

As engineers, we should be more concerned with what actually works, not with what works inside our heads.

How is a Ford F150 safer for a pedestrian?

There is also the possible issue of rapid exit when electrics are dead.

This is not an issue with Tesla design, all of that is handled by a traditional car battery that every car has, not the main battery. Those batteries are completely separate and in different parts of the car, I think specifically because of this safety issue.

I would be far more concerned with the acceleration of the fire. If I have plenty of notice to get away from the vehicle and to keep others away, who cares how vigorous it is? Either way, the car will burn down. I don't think it matters how long that will take.

Have there been any deaths in these EV fires?

Are there any contemporary visions of the future that are as forward thinking as the cyberpunk universe imagined in the 80s?

The Expanse

It's worth pointing out that the intent of transportation infrastructure isn't to turn a profit

It's also worth pointing out that transportation systems that do turn a profit are generally healthy and run well. It is difficult to turn a profit on a poorly run system.

Expecting a profit is completely missing the point

On the contrary, expecting a profit is expecting excellence, which we should absolutely do. There is no reason not to have high standards and high expectations.

I can argue that censorship isn't OK on either? Isn't that the appropriate position?

analysing how you are as a person and in my opinion makes you become a pacifist

This contradicts your argument. If there is no free will, you can't make yourself become anything.

Free will is an illusion but you can continue to postulate otherwise.

Then you won't be mad at me for down-voting your comment? It wasn't my choice!

Do you truly feel that the US has antagonized Canada and Mexico within the past 100 years? I'm pretty sure they're our closest allies.

Not sure I understand. If you're using your ISP's DNS service, majority of your requests are going to hit their cache. You shouldn't notice any downtime as long as the cache doesn't expire.

Actually everyone should prefer the other guy do it rather than host it themselves.

This isn't true. If you're hosting it, you can control it and you can make sure that it's always operational. The last thing you want is a 100 phone call of "my internet isn't working" and then trying to explain it's not your fault, but rather it's "some other guy".

Registration! Scary! It's an index-sized paper form you fill out. That's it.

The draft isn't coming back and there has been no instance of it coming back in any capacity in over 50 years. So no glass houses here, thanks.

I think you're confusing the word "can" and "must". A Jew can become an Israeli citizen. The issue here is that many of these people are not choosing to be China's citizens and yet are considered such.