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Comment Re:You don't say? (Score 1) 115

It doesnt' require that. If there is a certain amount of time it takes to transition, you still start and finish that transition 15 years faster. The lives saved aren't quite as many becasue as more people use self-driving cars you end up safer on average (fewer wrecks because a lot of times it takes 2 to tango).

Even in this case, the edge case was caused by a human driver, not the automated system. So to some extent, without real world testing, we can't get self-driving cars to function during that transition period. The space of crazy possibilities just goes up when you mix self-driving and human drivers.

Comment Re:Censorship is hard to reverse (Score 1) 328

a few years ago, that was exactly Zuckerberg's point. Multiple reports said he did not want to be the decider of what was right or wrong, true or false. He didn't want to have to make a ruling. And then slowly but surely people kept pointing out that they had a moral obligation to stop hate speech, to stop violent speech, to stop dangerous speech, to censor things people didn't politically like. It's just all the early instances were in other countries (i.e. not the west). Everyone was sure no western leader would cross that line. And whoops, it happened and how they were forced to first create loopholes (he is newsworthy so hate speech is ok), and then finally to just apply the rules we asked them to create.

Comment Re:100 hr work weeks (Score 1) 233

I'm not in any way calling your dedication or work ethic lacking by what follows:

There are a lot of folks who have spent extended periods putting in 100 hour work weeks and up for years, and all their hours are "hard" hours. When my parents were young medical residents (1970s) for 12,000 dollars a year they ran 117 hour work weeks for their first 2 years. 36 on 12 off, 2 days in a row off every 4 weeks. It stayed above 100 for a very long while, and I can still remember weeks where my dad (a surgeon in a small town) didn't come home for 4-5 days because it was easier to catch a quick shower and a nap at the hospital for an hour or 2 and have our cleaning lady take him new clothes to wear than come home. He probably had a running average of 70-80 hours a week (if you include patient file dictation time of 2 hours every morning, weekend rounds, and weekend ER coverage). I'm sure both of them wished they could zone out for 40 hours, but it doesn't quite work that way (and yes, I'm well aware there are probably many dead or maimed patients because of how doctors like them were trained at the time).

my cousin did M&A/structured finance law at a major firm in the city for several years. I know at least 2 years he billed 3500 hours. If you know much about law in that area, you get to bill no more than 75% of your actual working hours, so he had a couple years averaging near 100 hours including on his vacations.

They aren't the only ones of course, but I think for any of this, until you have actually been given clockable hours and continuous work on a schedule that has you go for 100 hours it's hard to imagine what it does. But I can say that you do learn an incredible amount of mental stamina. You can't learn to run a marathon on only 3 mile outings a day. I think this is similar.

Comment Re: Those who were there vs those who were not (Score 1) 357

30 grand wasn't 50 years ago. average wage for oil field welders in 1972 was 4.47 an hour. I guess if you get lucky and include pension valuation and other benefits you might get to 13k/ year? maybe? assuming a 2000 hour year. I doubt any other welder made anywhere near 30k in something outside this particular specialty (the only one I can find solid data for).

https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Ffraser.stlouisfed.org%2F...

the bigger issue is probably people assuming a random tidbit you hear was at the beginning vs the middle or end of a career. It's more likely it was 30k circa 1985, which is close to 70k today. Which is slightly under what a mid-career welder can expect to make today.

Comment Re:Paris accord is a scam (Score 1) 1109

It also doesn't explicitly require that the help be cash. We could have done it similar to how we do many other forms of aid with the money having to be spent with US based companies,and we could via interesting tax incentives induce private companies to foot most of the explicit bill. You could comfortably get to a reasonable number of "assistance" and that assistance can come in so many ways.

Comment Re:Paris accord is a scam (Score 1) 1109

I don't get these kinds of comments. Why do you think investment and significant expansion of the nuclear industry is not inline with the Paris accords? There is nothing in them (that I've seen, maybe I am misinterpreting legalese) that says solar or wind are the ways and CCS or nuclear are "not counted". It's just about reduced emissions, every country can get there however it pleases.

There also doesn't seem to be any requirement in the transfer rules for developed countries to developing countries that this transfer be cash. We could transfer anything, including giving limited tax breaks to companies that pool IP and "give" it to certain poor countries at a licensing cost (that companies set but we don't collect) that gets us there. You could even be even more creative and make that license a right to buy the goods from US manufacturers only. There are so many ways to transfer with it only costing the US a fraction of what it has signed up for (which is already a pretty small number, it's 100 bio a year spread across every developed country in the group). We already do things like this when it comes to medical assistance to poor countries, and all that window dressing is just for PR.

These were all options we had yesterday and Trump could have put forward such a multipronged approach if his closest advisers were people who had expertise in things like energy generation and economic policy. It could basically have been a revival of GWB policy on energy in so many ways. Instead the entire opportunity to show thoughtful leadership was squandered.

Comment Re:This is why they need H1b (Score 1) 215

big banks have had internships that pay the same as a starting analyst for years (and starting analysts at banks make more than the average american for most of that time).

frankly, when you are getting paid 5-6k a month, if you cant' find monthly accommodations that are sufficient for your needs and well within your budget, you have some pretty severe financial management problems. Our London based internships brought in folks from all across the EU and no one had an issue finding a room to rent, similar in Tokyo, New York,and Sydney.

The harder part of a paid internship is you limit yourself to people allowed to legally work. That is not always the case with students who are doing university abroad depending on the country, and most companies now won't just ignore the employment rules.

Comment Re:bullshit (Score 1) 142

it's not legal for a previous employer to say what they were paying you in many countries (though not all). If they do, it is grounds for a privacy violation suit. Most companies to avoid suits for having said "too much" will usually only confirm employment history, not anything else.

If it isn't, usually there are non-disclosure accords in your work contract (you cannot disclose your salary to anyone outside family and legal consultation), and it is trivial to say you want that to flow both ways (I've worked in areas where it was legally grey on that issue and adding that one line was trivial).

Comment Re:Pay negotiations still have to happen (Score 1) 142

funny... I've only worked for very large companies that would be on top employer lists and every single time I've been able to negotiate salaries, both changing shops and internal transfers to new companies I negotiated salary. And it's not like I was senior in any of these roles.

granted, if you aren't willing to say no to a company (or at least look like you are willing to say no), then you won't have any negotiating power.

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