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The most bizarre aspect of it is that the very same people that lament that fact, are also the ones who support all its causes and throw the most violent tantrums to scuttle improving the situation. We have tried it their way for decade after decade after decade, and the astronomical cost has only led to barely measurable improvements at wild cost/benefit ratios, while being unsustainable on their own essentially everywhere those measures are not artificially scaffolded and have heavy layers of spin and blatant propaganda lies applied to it.

Maybe the worst part of it is that those very people don't even understand that they are doing any of that because they have been manipulated and lied to about both the causes and solutions as they have ever increasingly been drawn into a cult in which up is down, left is right, and only the con job leaders benefit from it. When you have fixed, preconceived notions about outcomes, don't be surprised that you cannot achieve them with the existing variables. You end up having to bend and manipulate and rig and patch things ever increasingly and more bizarrely in order to maintain the desired end state or outcome that the system becomes ever more unstable and fragile. See the mid aughts housing fraud, aka, housing bubble for reference. The conclusion was that house prices can only go up, so everything was subsequently rigged through self-perpetuating incentives to support that fixed assumed outcome. Precisely what keeps us repeatedly doing the things that have no effect on the desired outcome. But at least it supports a huge non-profit industry complex that perpetuates itself under the guise of "helping" .... itself to your money.

It's quite frustrating that in spite of the truth and solution being right before our eyes, because truth and reality is too inconvenient and difficult and uncomfortable because it does not fit with preconceived conclusions and assumptions, we simply want to ignore reality and substituted our own. And so goes the perpetual poverty "problem" that we are seeking "solutions" for. Organizations can't even move away from Microsoft products simply because they get money from the Gates foundation ... and we want to solve poverty? It's a bad joke.

As someone has said, our "help" and development money is taking money from poor American children, in order to give it to rich Africans ... who then scurry it away into offshore bank accounts.

I know this may make some arteries pop, but the President of Uganda puts it well: http://thehill.com/policy/international/370435-ugandan-presi...

Child labor laws seem to be relevant here.

I think that mentality may change as people start coming to the realization that it will soon no longer be necessary or even possible to "scale up quick and capture market share" based on a theory of disruption. The gold rush of the internet will soon come to a halt, especially as people start realizing that you no longer need to sell a pound of flesh and the rights to your first and second born child to VC in order to build great, quality companies.

Depending on who wins out this general election, we will possibly see a rather ironic shift that will not only undermine the hegemony of Silicon Valley, but will also make staffing startups with low cost talent from all over the globe far more feasible. I've been telling Silicon Valley for a while now, be careful what you wish for, because it's easy to lose sight of the real world from within a rose colored bubble.

I have a feeling that as/if globalism were to expand and consolidate power and control, it also broadens, dilutes, and devalues "labor" on a global scale as you start feeling the effects of globalism that clothing makers, furniture makers, auto makers, etc. have all felt before you. The only thing that is keeping the tech industry enslaved to Silicon Valley, is the dependence on their VC masters, as you so well described. Once that is no longer a benefit or necessary or an advantage, what keeps people in Silicon Valley?

Quite interesting that Harvard Magazine would publish something like that. Doesn't that pretty much imply that Harvard is unnatural and abnormal

What a travesty of both justice, democracy, and government.

Too big to jail, I guess. Ignorance is an excuse when you have a president running interference for you to undermine democracy, even if you knowingly and intentionally weakened and exposed the whole country and then lied about it and played it off.

But let's make a crooked, incompetent, and dangerous person our leader.

That's a rather imbalanced perspective. China has grown not through organic development and innovation, but through global, state sponsored, commercial espionage; and in a country where the state is inextricably linked to even the "private" corporations.

I'm no fan of Apple's ways sometimes, but it's like comparing a borderline unscrupulous business to an organized crime outfit.

It would not surprise me one bit if this whole "patent violation" is nothing but a sham to fool people like you into believing there's some legitimacy behind efforts to sabotage Apple taking over the market from Chinese firms / state control.

Do you feel better after trying to be passive aggressively insulting? Let me guess, you have no comprehension for the fact that your comment is precisely the kind of infantile tantrum I was referring to; in the absence of argument or fact, you resort to flaccid attempts at insult to make yourself feel better in an attempt at abating the discomfort that comes from the cognitive dissonance of reality penetrating the artificial boundaries of your self-delusion.

Don't worry, I don't expect you to understand that and very much expect the same kind of defensive reaction you just exhibited. Don't worry, you can continue fooling yourself into believing you are correct.

Considering that the definition of "hate speech" has already morphed into anyone addressing race, sex, gender, national origin, religion, etc. it seems we have already arrived at such a vile place you described. It absolutely boggles the mind to realize that we are living in a world that is imploding on itself through self-immolation and self-doubt and self-destruction.

I guess the cry-bully crowd will be happy once the west and the civilization and peace and prosperity it has brought to the world and provided them is left in a crumpled heap an we are all so fortunate as the rest of the noble savage world that does not indulge in the "privilege" of freedom, liberties, free speech, individual rights, self-determination, competition, etc.

The blessings of socialist nirvana will soon be upon us and we will all be equally destitute once everything has been torn down in an infantile fits of social rage and tantrum akin to what led up to the dark ages.

Something that looking at this post reminded me of is how all our digitalization is very much abdicating control of information and even down right ownership.

Does anyone remember the incident where Amazon just decided that they needed to delete books they had sold to Kindle users and just went in and did so off everyone's Kindle?

We have even arrived at the point where people don't even question ownership anymore. You can't give or sell your books, you can't buy second hand books, you can't sell your digital movies, etc. I thought I recalled either a court case or policy effort to make transfer and sharing of materials possible so you could, e.g., lend your friend a movie or book, and so you could sell a digital copy at a discounted rate.

I don't think people quite appreciate the ramifications of this, because sure, now it only extends to digital content, but how soon before other industries get the bright idea that you are only buying the "license" to the disign of their furniture and the design of their car and they are giving you the materials for free to use, you know, like it currently is with digital content, and then they make it illegal to sell your furniture or car or any other object that you are only licensing the deign of.

Because we know that it's not like movies or music has gotten any cheaper with the absence of the roughly 70% of production and distribution costs of physical media that has now all gone to profit.

I'm not quite sure what to make of a person like that offering a "post trump America starter pack". I for one want to MAGA because I have the dignity not to think that kind of book store is cool, or hip, or awesome or whatever the hippest of the hip bearded man-bun donning hipsters use these days to describe stuff they discover that was never lost or forgotten in the first place.

Interestingly enough, there are quite a few of these weird ass hoarder book stores in the DC area.

That was my thought to recently. If you have robots replacing low wage workers, which most people don't really realize was nothing more than the evolution of slavery, then you have zero incentive to produce in said low wage countries. The next wave of "low cost production" regions will be determined by access to low cost energy and low cost space. In many ways, I suspect that the robot based production could even move towards the north as cooling may play a significant factor. We kind of see some of that already as Google and the likes have been moving their massive server farms into northern regions for cooling purposes.

Another factor in this matter is that the uncomfortable reality is that "we" need to stave off the influx of uneducated and unskilled people. Reality is that people will lose ever more value, especially as, rather oddly, the liberal autonomist types advocate for things the they don't realize will only commodify the vast majority of people.

The newcomer Austinites that have flooded into the city over the last years are immensely butt-hurt about the whole Lyft/Uber ordeal.

I suspect the first time someone is robbed or raped we'll get a cry-bully rant pushing blame onto the city.

See Reddit and Facebook for a domestic examples.

I know there are differing views on Reddit in particular, but reality simply is that the "moderation" has become well beyond moderation and is well into censorship and authoritarian type of control and domination of the conversation that totally and fundamentally breaks the foundation of how Reddit is supposed to work.

There is really no legitimate excuse (which is what they always are) to censor, remove, and ban users and comments that are not all out direct threats to commit criminal acts or spam. What is going on on Reddit in particular is a thoroughly liberal authoritarianism that is heavily dominated by a kind of perverse paternalistic supremacist, i.e., protecting users from hearing and seeing things that the authoritarian types deem unauthorized.

Reddit, as example, is intended to allow the community, through a kind of civil society, determine the dialogue and conversation; but with ever spiking frequency, Reddit in particular is being sabotaged as the authoritarians remove the community's ability to shape the conversation.

The mods on Reddit in particular are thoroughly acting as common authoritarian goons by patrolling the discussions and routinely removing comments and conversations they decree as unauthorized or very much like "speaking against the regime". It's clearly an authoritarian mentality eating its way through Reddit at the moment.

Sure, some will say "private website, blah blah blah" but that's not the point really. It's about civil responsibility, which, ironically, the liberal authoritarian goons on Reddit supposedly frequently espouse regarding all sorts of other topics. As the internet continues to be consolidated and shrinks and is ever more controlled by the likes of Facebook that is controlled by Zuckerberg, who's goal is for Facebook to replace the internet, you will have ever more increasingly controlled spaces for public discussions and at some point there will be no non-private spaces for discussion to any effective degree. At that point we have come full circle and devolved back to a monarchical and aristocratic type of social structure where all of society and it's people only operate in "private websites" and the justification is that because the ruling class control everything and all forms of communication, like Kings, Dukes, and Princes, you are claimed to have no right to have conversations.

I know many, rather short sighted people may dismiss what I say, but reality is that is a rather counter-intuitive and unexpected manner, the internet is really leading to far more control and consolidation of power and homogenization of society and collapse of diversity. It's rather odd that large segments of society are all supportive of things that will end in demise of the very tings they espouse.

In many ways, the current phase humanity is in with regard to neo-liberalist views, is akin to investment in a ponzi scheme. Everyone (liberal, tech, globalist, etc types) is all Golden Age level indulged in excess and self-gratification because they invested all their money in a ponzi scheme that has huge returns on paper, but the day will come when you can't withdraw the false returns or the scheme collapses altogether.

And the fear mongering commences. It's really rather abusive and manipulative how the establishment is just berating people with a sense of self-determination and dignity not to submit to central domination.

If you think about it, it's really a counter-intuitive, yet rather expected behavior when you understand what is really happening in the world where a global elite is trying to consolidate and centralize ever more control and domination in a global system of government. Humanity needs actual diversity, not this mess that the EU and globalist, jet-setting elite have fooled the mentally ill liberal and Marxist minded people into beieving is diversity. We need differences, we need actual uniqueness; not homogenization, not consolidation and centralization.

Unfortunately, the internet is actually contributing to that trend. Just look at the recent revelations about Facebook controlling the messsage, discussion, and conversation of it's users by controlling what they can see and others share with them. And that's Facebook, with triple digit million users; a number of controlled messaging and propaganda tool that all other dictators and authoritarian regimes would have lost their mind with glee over having access to.

I can't recall off the top of my head who exactly is working on it, but I believe there are some interesting efforts going on at MIT to try to reintroduce decentralization back to the internet. We really need it. Humanity is really heading to a bad place if we don't figure this out.

I just found out that Firefox removed the 3D Inspector with v.47. It's a shame because that was an excellent tool for auditing and inspecting. If you haven't had the chance, give it a whirl.

Well, I can assure you that if train ridership increases, the risk will increase as a function of the attack vector and the threat by muslims. As that risk profile increases, so will the "security nonsense" and difficulty getting there increase.

Also, the degree of expedience at which airports function leaves a lot of room for improvement. There is really little reason why it could not get far more efficient. You seem to also miss the fact that even if you establish a route through 1,000 miles of other people's land and have dispossessed them through eminent domain, and you have blasted your way through ecosystems, you are then stuck with specific routes that can only adapt by scaling throughput of that specific route.

Think of it this way, with the pestilence of douchebags overrunning Austin there is no way that rail could have accommodated that growth, let alone even triggered it. What, are you going to build high speed rail infrastructure across multiple states to California to accommodate the flow of douchebags to SXSW and ACL? You'd be lucky to be done before Austin has suffocated itself and the bubble bursts and the next fad has drawn the attention of the pretentious class.

I won't disagree that train travel is more comfortable, but hell, you really need to be because the trip, at best, is going to take you three times as long. Because what you are also missing is that we are talking about high speed rail here, we are not talking about fast rail like Acela, which is quite convenient in the NE corridor, but also only because of the population density. But even that train stops on a regular basis, which is also a function of what makes is even remotely not a horrific idea even though it still loses money. The problem with air travel these days is that the Airline industry has essentially captured regulators and legislators and are raping the public with high prices they are colluding on and ever decreasing service and features, also essentially due to collusion and a lack of real competition.

Don't get me wrong, I realize that train travel has some benefits and is probably more energy efficient and less polluting, but reality is that it is in no way cost effective let alone adaptable and flexible.

The thing that kind of irks me the most about he wide eyed, pie in the sky, rail supporters is that they have absolutely no idea how much it actually costs to provide the kind of level of rail and public transportation infrastructure that you see in Europe. The costs are astronomical both in long term investments and in M&O. There are inklings of how much it really costs, but reality is that no one really have an accurate understanding of its cost because European governments keep that information under lock and key, lest the rabble find out how much their money is squandered.

I wonder if it will ever hit the mainstream that Nestle put plastic filler in jar baby food in order to drive sales as babies would need to eat more baby food because they would simply pass the plastics. If anyone's interested in pursuing the story, they funded research into how much plastic could be added without causing health problems.

It really kind of fascinates me why people are so obsessed with rail and high speed rail. What are the emotional reasons for it, because there are no rational and reasonable arguments for it that can't be refuted. It makes absolutely no sense and strikes me as another one of those examples of obsessive thoughts and ideal people have these days. It's like all the shitty education we subjected people of roughly <35 years old to are starting to bear shitty rotten and mutated fruits.

Bullshit! I will believe it when 2/3 or Americans put $1,000 or so deposit towards a high speed rail system.

It's kind of the de facto escape hatch for some and a baseline analogy many can comprehend because of decade long conditioning. It does not surprise me one bit.

What's always rather surprised me though is that no one seems to have realized that the decades of collective shaming of Germans for having gone through the national socialist dictatorship and war, has led to a deeply lost and self-loathing society without pride, dignity, or healthy identity. The society is in rather advanced stages self-destruction and decomstruction. The question is really only whether German culture and society will at all survive it's suicidal tendencies.

The thing that kind of annoys me about the XPS is the location of the camera. It's in the bottom bezel of the monitor. They should have simply not put a camera in the machine because all you will ever get are upshots of your nostrils, closeups of your hands while typing, or the bottom half of the image being a close up panoramic shot of your keyboard if you try to bring the camera up to eye level.

I don't know what Dell was thinking, but clearly they weren't thinking much. It's horrible.

Don't worry, soon humans will have destroyed all habitats. We're working really hard, but we can't get to it all at once.

I don't see why you couldn't modify the concept to always include numbers and spacial characters.

For example; your "password" could be a combination of words, numbers, and characters while the "thing you know" is something like capitalizing the even or odd first character corresponding with the even or odd number corresponding to the first letter of the site or company, and combine that with the even or odd sequenced number and character in their sequential location in the password or at the end or beginning of the entered password.

I'm sure I could describe that more clearly if I tried.

Freeloaders are driving up costs, due to the oversupply of people and unmet demand for housing and finite goods and services. The pretentiousness it simply a cultural function of the types of people that are being attracted to Austin; a mixture of internet douchbags that have ever increasingly proliferated adn infested SXSW, which are largely made up of the west coast and big city self-righteously self-absorbed.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, one of two things is true, either you're naive about this matter, or you are precisely the type I just referred to and, as expected, fully lack self-awareness. I realize that hearing something like that will not necessarily be well received here, but it's really a pestilent type of cultural phenomenon which is a pernicious type of cancer that is constantly eating away at any progress that can be made.

Let me explain what you don't understand and can't follow. The massive influx of people into Austin has degraded what Austin was because it has exceeded any capacity to fully absorb them without a degradation. When you arrive at something that others built and paid for and yet still have full access to as if you had paid for it, that's when you are mooching and freeloading specifically. That's the whole definition of freeloading, not paying for something that you are using or taking advantage of.

Now that you are provided with the information to understand what you could previously not, let me further help by illustrating the only way in which it could not be freeloading and mooching. If new comers had to pay exponentially higher tax rates, essentially as a kind of compensation and even a rate of return, which in turn then lowered the taxes of locals that would be the only way to not be freeloading and mooching, especially in a system like Austin that is in no way capable of sustaining the influx of people without significant impact and degradation of the very thing that attracted the freeloading and mooching types.

You seem to be under the impression that somehow paying the cost of operation is sufficient to compensate for prior investments, let alone rates of return. It's quite ironic that such an erroneous mindset would exist in this forum. Then again, it is a tech startup forum, so it really isn't all that surprising.

Think of it this way. If you take n amount of money and invest it in starting a company by buying facilities, equipment, various other capital goods, and hire people; how long to you think you would last by selling your product or goods at the cost of variable inputs alone? ... not even to mention the return on capital or investment. And that still doesn't even get close to capturing the human factor of community and society and culture that is lost through such a destructive locust like swarming of places.

I get that most people in here can't think past their own selfish wants and desires, but what do you think makes a place, any place, so attractive so that you want to go there, it's not your contribution that you made to that place. You are a textbook freeloader at that point, especially in smaller places like Austin used to be where all the things that attracted people to Austin like community and culture existed before they smothered it.

We are going to see ever more of these kinds of things happen as the internet causes human swarming behaviors. Maybe one day people will start realizing it and its absolutely detrimental impact on society and humanity. It is in effect a great leveling and averaging of humanity, a regression to mediocre mean that destroys uniqueness, actual diversity, and civilization, and incentive for community and creation. What are we when there is nothing unique anymore because the second something becomes great and a community comes together, an influx of freeloaders that want to mooch off of it start pulling it down? We are facing a future of the commoditization of humanity, accelerated by the internet and the exponential pace at which anything good or unique is discovered and immediately smothered and trampled.

Let me guess; you are one of those new people and are resentful that people you are freeloading and mooching off of are resentful that you are destroying the community and society they built over time.

Its the same thing in Austin, even though Austin has really be fully deconstructed at this point and it is nothing like the nice place it once was. It's become ever more exclusive, ever more restricted, ever more douchy and pretentious, ever more expensive, ever more packed with people that are trampling everything.

What's actually disgusting is people like you who are incapable of understanding why people would rightfully be resentful about freeloaders and moochers trampling and disrespecting things they created and have a bond to. It's easy being a freeloader and moocher, but it really does undercut any incentive to create anything.

I suspect that in the future we will see examples of restrictive legislation or policies that will rightfully penalize newcomers and mooching types that started swarming to the next version of Austin due to the internet brigading effect.

I am constantly reminded of that 90's movie Weekend at Bernie's where, in order to keep the party going, two guys drag a rich dead guy around and make it appear as though he's still alive in order to keep the party going and have access to all his stuff and wealth.

Is that a fair assumption? I guess at that point you are simply biding time because if it ever comes out or there is even just a suspicion that you are lying your business is dead as word spreads across the internet

They've never really been all that particularly responsible. It's reporters WITHOUT borders after all.

Let's remember here; Obama's War on Whistleblowers