alwaysinshade
Joined 14 years ago
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Recent submissions
Comment · 11 years ago
Comment · 11 years ago
Following identification of the beneficiary households through a participatory process in the village, the six activities are:
1. Productive asset transfer: a one-time transfer of a productive asset
2. Consumption support: a regular transfer of food or cash for a few months to about a year (11)
3. Technical skills training on managing the particular productive assets
4. High-frequency home visits
5. Savings: access to a savings account and in some instances a deposit collection service and/or mandatory savings
6. Some health education, basic health services, and/or life-skills training
So let's translate what's happening. Starting with one, we have a tool or array of tools that can help someone be productive. Let's call it a paint brush and paint. At two we have something that provides essentials until the tool-person-couple is making enough money to support themselves - social security/low income supplementation. Three, they're taught how to use the asset effectively - basic job training. Four, make sure they're doing alright - a social worker shows up at their house. Five, a means of saving for a rainy day (which has meaning in the tradesperson world), when things go bad (not enough work for a limited period) or to increase capability or comfort down the track. Finally at six, teaching someone how to take care of themselves which means they can also take care of others.
It'd be interesting to see what would happen if we coupled #1 and #6 in countries high on the HDI with existing social welfare programs. Perhaps a computer with MS Office or cheap, fuel efficient car for #1 and cooking/cleaning/child care training for #6. Throwing money at the problem alone without making sure they have a productive capability is where things are going wrong. This could be something that scales nicely for any country.
Comment · 11 years ago
A recent article on HN made me realise that the U.S. might be on the right track for fixing this. The article was called Game Theory's Cure For Corruption Makes Us All Cops [0]. The solution is in your pocket.
Imagine a city where police commit blatant traffic violations and never ticket one another. The authorities could decrease power inequalities by developing an online system in which all citizens are able to anonymously report dangerous drivers. Anyone who received too many independent reports would be investigated – police included. This sounds almost laughably simple, and yet the model indicates that it ought to do the trick. It is, after all, essentially the same system used by many online communities.
[0] http://aeon.co/magazine/society/game-theorys-cure-for-corrup...
Comment · 13 years ago
$249 is a lot of money - you're talking the cost of a subsidized high-end phone for something that has less functionality. My intuition tells me smart-watches wont sell in big BIG numbers unless:
- It's a phone, therefore it can be subsidized by the carriers
- It almost does everything a smartphone can, including having a lot of screen real-estate, but only costs ~$250 unsubsidized. Perhaps like a flexible iPod touch that wraps around your wrist
If someone can come up with a $200+ wrist-mounted device that sells in the millions but doesn't meet the same level of functionality as a smartphone then I'll gladly eat my Fitbit.
Comment · 13 years ago
Charge a not-inconsequential fee for in-air calls so that people only use it if it's absolutely necessary. Perhaps make the charge go up exponentially with time so that calls remain brief.
Comment · 13 years ago
Agreed, it would have been better to have the chief scientist discuss the core technologies, design and potential applications than watch an Elon Musk/Tony Stark ripoff drive his Tesla-S home to his sweet pad and knob around with a CAD model of a rocket via a seemingly non-intuitive interface.
If the device was only a few hundred dollars to purchase then the marketing video might have had some merit. But at 3k, you're selling to people who want to know how it really performs, and what technical trickery Mann might have introduced to make it an exciting human-machine interface.
Comment · 13 years ago
When the executive negotiates without Congress's participation, citizens don't get a say in the process. We don't get to review the agreement, or pressure our representatives into changing or rejecting it. However, special industry groups do, including the RIAA, as advisors to USTR.
- http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120508/17174518835/time-t...
P.S. The TPP stands for Trans Pacific Partnership. A US senator means jack shit to someone in Japan, Australia etc.
Comment · 13 years ago
let's not forget the biggest lobby group of all: the American citizenry
Does the citizenry have the same level of access to negotiating parts of the TPP as the lobby groups who paid admission? IIRC, the citizenry have been completely cut out of the process. They didn't even know the contents of the TPP. What r0h1n possibly implied is that the US Govt backs interests that are paid for.
Comment · 13 years ago
I'd say I'm a hipster, but I still like Google. I think you would have been down-voted for shitcanning hipsters (the implication is that rage-quitting Google's services it's fashionable and they're sheep) rather than you being correct that it's due to hipster mentality. In a way, shitcanning hipsters is fashionable, so we're all treading the same ground. Let's all have a beer together and chill out, just mind the beards.
Disclaimer: I don't have a beard
Comment · 13 years ago
No, that's just Tony Abbott. Expect more hilarity in the years (days?) to come. If you can't wait, just Google some of his past statements. If you like prejudice, two-dimensional thinking and more meaningless rhetoric than you can shake a stick at, then you're going to love Tony Abbott.
Let's see where he can take a country that ranked #2 on the Human Development Index and the highest of 34 countries on the OECD Better Life index. Should be interesting, considering he was voted in by the "Aussie battlers" who were enjoying a better quality of life than they've ever experienced in Australian history (notice Australia doesn't move on the HDI even when you account for inequality? The US sure does, from #3 to #16). Should be great when, under the Trans-Pacific Partnership he sells out to the US to trade a few horses [1] and our healthcare/pharmaceutical industry emulates the American system. Good times ahead.
[1] "there's always horse-trading in these negotiations, but in the end … everyone is better off" - Tony Abbot, November 14, 2013
Comment · 13 years ago
Good question - looking at the OECD Better Life Index [1] for the Netherlands:
In general, 86% of people in the Netherlands say they have more positive experiences in an average day (feelings of rest, pride in accomplishment, enjoyment, etc) than negative ones (pain, worry, sadness, boredom, etc), more than the OECD average of 80%.
Perhaps it's a case of better access to health services, so more people in the Netherlands are able to be diagnosed and treated with depression whereas countries with poor health services and high levels of depression are ultimately under-reported?
[1] http://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.org/countries/netherlands/
Comment · 13 years ago
"So what do we think they're manufacturing with sapphire?"
This is just fun conjecture, so take it with a grain of salt the size of a racoon's head, but considering you can make sapphire panels large enough for vehicle windows [1], you might be able to cover a TV with it (among other things).
Consider that Jony Ive is credited with a design for a TV where the display slides inside a glass enclosure [2][3]; Perhaps you'd want to coat the enclosure with artificial sapphire to maintain a strong protective layer, or even use a thin, strong sapphire enclosure to reduce thickness while achieving good-enough strength.
We know that Apple was happy to build its new Mac Pros in the US because they're expensive (high margin) and the largest number of buyers would be in the US (video production, music production), thus a reduction in logistics costs could help balance higher worker costs. We can make the educated guess that an Apple TV would cost a lot - perhaps approaching or exceeding the cost of a new Mac Pro. So it's not hard to imagine a chunk of production moving to where the customers are.
Either way, looking at [3] we can see that Apple is interested in glass enclosures for its devices, so sapphire would be a good way to minimize scratches and general wear.
[1] http://www.photonic.saint-gobain.com/uploadedFiles/SGphotoni...
[2] http://www.patentlyapple.com/.a/6a0120a5580826970c0192ac6465...
[3] http://www.patentlyapple.com/patently-apple/2013/08/apple-fi...
Comment · 13 years ago
"if "bigoted" ideas are delusional, shouldn't the fact that we have far more integration and exposure to different sub-cultures in sufficient time eliminate all bigotry"
I'm not sure if delusional is the right term - small minded might fit the bill a little better. So if it's due to mental laziness or an inherent dearth of mental ability, perhaps bigotry is difficult to abate without laws to protect minorities.
Nonetheless you ask a good question - with time and exposure can we eliminate bigotry? I hope so. But it's easy to invent new targets for ridicule: Emos, Hipsters, Rockabillies etc. They're not exactly unprivileged minorities, but it shows how easy it is to disparage someone because of their appearance and cultural differences.
Comment · 13 years ago
"But that's exactly what Rockstar does"
Rockstar acts as a firewall, sure, but the parent companies make things. IV made a mosquito-killing laser that no one could buy, then allegedly got down to business by flicking individual patents to shell LLCs and suing indie app developers for using iOS's in-app-purchase APIs. Classy.
Comment · 13 years ago
"I thought it was impossible to be more of a douchebag than Intellectual Ventures, but apparently, there's a new winner in town."
What Rockstar is doing is very shitty, but IV takes the cake because they're a non-practicing entity. It's one thing to sue competitors for making products similar to your own, it's another to make no products and sue people who dare to make something vaguely encroaching your vaguely defined patent.
I think the point is that the "energy" isn't what was required to make the product, it was the energy expended to acquire the it. Collecting shells means time spent not collecting food. Wearing the shells signifies a kind of wealth where you have an abundance of time and thus an abundance of resources. Spending hard earned money on shitty earphones is a similar kind of wealth.