> We're already to the point where if your commute is less than 8 miles or so, using Uber daily is cheaper than the cost of ownership on a $30k vehicle. Just imagine what self-driving cars will do to that equation.
Which brings up the question: why the hell would anyone buy a $30k vehicle for 16 miles of commuting?! You can get a perfectly reliable car that's even reasonably safe and comfortable for regional road trips @ well under $10k, without even looking for sales or deals.
Until true driverless (no driver in vehicle, no insurance policy needed) happens, ownership will always be cheaper than daily taxi rides.
I did. I bought a LEAF for around $30K (minus $10K in government cheese) for a commute that's about 18 miles RT.
I did it because I wanted an electric car, and specifically a 2014 or later and there were very few 2014s for sale and those that were for sale were overpriced, IMO (in some cases, more than the net price of a new one).
Our other car is indeed a sub-$10K 2005 CR-V with 180+K miles on it.
There is one thing I really like about this proposal. Gates believes our future depends upon scientific advances and resulting technological innovation, supported by modest and easy-to-justify infrastructure improvements. This breaks away from demand-side policy-centered approaches, yes. But more importantly -- to me, at least -- it breaks away from an over-reliance on old science.
To me, this emphasis on science AND technology -- rather than exclusively technology -- is perhaps an even more significant idea than primarily-supply-side thinking.
I think Gates' C=0 goal is probably the locus of this shift in thinking from "force mass deployment of existing technologies using the levers of policy" to "science the shit out of this, then innovate like madmen, and only then enlist public policy when it's truly the only missing piece (see: power grid example from article)".
So "demand side" means industrial efficiencies? I always thought of it as, you know, less end-usage.
Yes it's a small share of the total, and no I don't believe it's a matter of policy. It's cultural. Whose job do we think it is to "spend within our means" energy-wise? Everyone's? Or is it industry's job to just "make it work" so that we can keep black-boxing power, as we do water.
Example: I was at an airport café this morning and I noticed that the menu was displayed on three big display monitors. They were probably 42-inch screens, all showing the same static image. There were like 6 menu items, all minor variants on a cup of coffee. They were all clearly visible from every possible angle. The same job could have been done undistinguishably well by any single one of them—not to speak of a printed board.
I know, it's an airport for crying out loud. The energy used by those screens is too small to measure. What concerns me is that we (Americans at least) live in a society where someone—I would say thinks this is okay, but really just doesn't think about it at all.
So I completely agree about where our priorities should be, but I think that those levers would be easier to pull if we as a culture had a little more "mechanical sympathy."[0]
Problem is, we have no idea how long it will take to find a breakthrough technology. But we have the problem now. Do we just invest in research and pray?
That doesn't necessarily mean they aren't going to solicit ideas -- either from public calls or (especially) from recognized experts.
Most grant-giving organizations don't accept unsolicited requests for money, but then regularly put out completely public solicitations for proposals on specific topics.
From the article, it sounds like 1) they already have a lot of pretty specific ideas about where to invest; and 2) they're waiting until they coalesce matching funding from other foundations to start making solicitations/rewarding grants/investing in companies.
An American without a high school diploma or GED convinced a seriously good German university to admit him. That's pretty impressive.
If I were in his situation, there's no way I would have had the gull to try that route. Probably would've just stayed in the forest service. Maybe gone for a GED then community college then a local land grant. By which time I'd be too burnt out on it all (and too old) to even think about a doctorate.
There's no doubting that the German people helped this guy achieve what he achieved. There's also no doubting that he was truly exceptionally resourceful (and maybe a bit lucky, too).
This shows that the Göttingen science faculty is maintaining its centuries-long tradition of taking chances and nurturing scientific talent, without regard to sex, race, or class, often in defiance of the surrounding culture. The most famous example is Emmy Noether:
Exactly. It's not just that he was home-schooled. It's that he was apparently home-schooled by people who were apparently particularly incompetent at home-schooling.
Of course, the guy's life story is still an inspirational tale of creating opportunities for yourself where none seem to exist. And his discovery -- although probably not rocking the foundation of the (sub)field -- is still impressive and pretty interesting. And the article is written well enough.
So you should still read the article. Just pretend the link-baity title doesn't exist and don't go in with pre-conceptions :-)
I agree. The article was a cool read and props to the guy for successfully building a career in science, despite his shitty upbringing. I just wish the headline didn't wildly exaggerate his admirable accomplishments.
It's also misleading -- although he did grow up in a trailer park, he also attended an world-renown university of both undergraduate and doctoral studies prior to making the discovery. And he wasn't working alone in the middle of nowhere -- he as working with a team of other scientists.
It's a fantastic life story, but the title is definitely distracting click bait.
Taking on Pearson and other companies that use similarly predatory tactics to extract value from society's most disadvantaged is exactly the sort of "disruption" that the world needs more of.
That said, I doubt one could go at it alone with no support or with only a grant -- building up mind share, fighting off BS patent threats, and doing enough sales to break even on these non-development costs aren't the sort of things that a government/ngo grant will typically support. And even if you could find the money, you'll still need access to a network of experts.
Someone should setup a fund that force-multiplies government/NGO grants for societally beneifical OSS with funding and access to expertise for these other things (legal/marketing/etc.). The aim could just be breaking even on non-grant-funded costs by selling support/branding/etc. to institutional players like hospitals and large chains.
I mentioned Owls above. You wont believe what it is... just clipart in a nice easel book form. I'm not joking, its just page after page of clipart, accompanied by a manual and 20 page copyright warning booklet.
The thing is Pearson has convinced governments, schools, charities, hospitals etc that this system is the best way to diagnose speech issues. My wife and a lot of her colleagues would beg to differ.
Tangent: Pearson sells curricula to a lot of school districts. These are the people that in part control what your children learn, and what their teachers can teach.
Agree re: disruption. I've thought about this type of thing a lot, and I wish there was a way to fix the root cause instead of what I consider the symptom (dodgy overpriced software for a specific niche, especially when it targets non-technical users and/or has to do with medicine / HELPING HUMANS PHYSICALLY). I came to the conclusion that it's Very Hard to disincentivize greed. Anyone have any ideas for what could be done to help curb behavior like this by companies (companies which are really just people who are making these kinds of decisions -- never forget that)?
I’m not sure there’s any overt greed exactly. A company saw a market and launched a product for that market. But like most companies and products, especially in the case of a de facto monopoly, they’re not very good. When there’s no competition, why spend the money to innovate or improve? Your customers are still going to buy your shit.
The best way to improve the status quo on a case-by-case basis is to introduce competition, say by developing a better product, marketing it well, and basically out-predating the theretofore market predators. The marketing is easy if you can get enough momentum behind it:
“FooCorp wants to sell you these materials for $absurd. We made these better alternative materials. You can print the basic set yourself for free, or order any of our wide, high-quality selection, starting from $reasonable.”
I don’t think there is a general solution to the underlying cause, though.
Out of curiosity, are there effective and significantly cheaper systems in other countries outside of the US that people could purchase from? Or do they have industry associations and such eating out of their hand to mandate their use?
This is exactly the kind of thing I'd love to see China come in and drive the price down to commodity levels on.
It's not terribly uncommon for colleges to require some form of physical education like in high school. The motivations are varied -- from legal mandate (for state schools) all the way to subsidizing the athletic staff with tuition dollars for BS courses.
And even where there aren't strict requirements, students sometimes end up with a few extra "free" course credits (e.g. to stay full time for a final semester). Uni staff/faculty are often willing to teach a course like this because it's fun and they get a couple grand for teaching young people about their hobby for an hour every week.
FWIW I took a rock climbing course like this (last semester, had a few extra credits my scholarship paid for in any case, and didn't have time for a real course due to travel). There was just enough "scholarly study" to make the course barely legit (read 2 books and discussed safety techniques in a science-y way), but 99.9% of the time was spent climbing.
In almost all cases, there's a significant difference in the sort of risk that comes from B/FaaS dependencies and the sort of risk that comes from PL lock-in. The former leads to technology lock-in and vendor lock-in, while the latter almost never[1] leads to vendor lock-in.
Technology lock-in without vendor lock-in isn't that huge of a liability. A popular PL under an appropriate license isn't going to disappear tomorrow, and its creator doesn't have the power to hold your business at gunpoint. Conversely, B/FaaS providers upon which you truly depend definitely can extract (or by disappearing simply destroy) much more value than you originally anticipate.
[1] If you use Wolfram Language or Matlab then your choice of PL causes vendor lock-in, but most PLs aren't like this.
I agree - "vendor lock-in" seems like a valid point, although I don't know the details of many of these services. "Locked into a programming language" is something that will probably happen kind of naturally anyway.
Which brings up the question: why the hell would anyone buy a $30k vehicle for 16 miles of commuting?! You can get a perfectly reliable car that's even reasonably safe and comfortable for regional road trips @ well under $10k, without even looking for sales or deals.
Until true driverless (no driver in vehicle, no insurance policy needed) happens, ownership will always be cheaper than daily taxi rides.