Silicon Valley Redneck

Stupid question of the... whatever

"Can you gain real-world skills from video games?"

DUH!  It depends how well the game and its player interface map onto the real world.

A side-scrolling shoot-'em-up with keyboard control, unlimited ammunition, and an assortment of magical spells?  Not much to learn from that.

Those fancy video games on dedicated hardware platforms that are used to train airline pilots?  Those are designed for developing specific real-world skills, and they're very good for the purpose.

Though the latter do tend to be combined with professional instruction... mostly inside the video game (as opposed to using a real airliner, with the attendant operating expenses, risks, and difficulty of summoning a microburst on demand when training calls for one).

Key escrow, again?

Yes, the Feds are trying to persuade Congress that the existence of secure commercial encryption is a total disaster for national security, and that a back door for government access should be mandatory.

Which would put us back the the Fun Old Days of downloading PGP from a server in Finland, maybe.  Or at least that's what evil people would do, right?

And then I guess those evil ones could be sent to prison forever on a charge of Not Making The Government's Life Easy, which is what the whole "structuring" thing is about, no?

And, as in the bygone days of Clipper Chips, there's the question of who exactly will have access to the back-door keys, and under what conditions.

We already know the answers, don't we?  Edward Snowden, the Chinese, and a 14-year-old hacker in Bulgaria; and whenever they feel like it.

I'm totally certain that, for example, the IRS will never get the back-door keys for the communications of groups that engage in political advocacy.  And that clerk at the FBI could never, possibly, sell your key to your creepy ex.  It's inconceivable!

Afterthought: Maybe this time around the U.S. will bully Finland into restricting crypto export... so if your business wants non-backdoored crypto, you end up downloading something from Moldova.  What could possibly go wrong?

Social Justice Warrior claims to be mentally ill

So she can't be blamed for anything she's said or done, apparently.

Apparently she also "was" a racist.  Was.  Riiiight.

This is one for the DUH! files.

If you actually know anything about anything that the SJWs get bent out of shape about, look at the claims they make that fall within your area of expertise.  Do they have any connection to reality?  Are these the statements of a person who is not mentally ill?

Of course not.  And it's not just lefty SJWs, of course.  From frat-house gang rapes to satanic daycare centers to peasants being turned into newts, there's never been a shortage of madfolk to make outrageous claims.  The mad tales that serve the interests of the current rulers are taken seriously (at least for public consumption).

And so we hang the old woman who gave young Nellie the evil eye, and the Church inherits her cottage and lands.  And, in these more civilized days, tech companies buy indulgences for not having the approved ethnic and gender balance, and then treat themselves with a course of leeches.

Well, there's your problem.

From this article, found via Slashdot:

The core of the problem is, of course, the job market. The M.L.A. report estimates that only sixty per cent of newly-minted Ph.D.s will find tenure-track jobs after graduation.

The core of the problem is, of course, the assumption that the purpose of years spent in academia learning to pile higher and deeper is to get a permanent job in academia teaching others to pile higher and deeper, so that they can....

Let's assume that each newly-minted Ph.D. who gets a tenure-track job spends 30 years in academia, minting a total of 10 new Ph.D.s in his field during that time, each of whom follows in his footsteps.  (I just made these numbers up, but we're talking humanities here.)  How long does it take before the population of tenured Ph.D.s exceeds the total population of the world?  Explain your assumptions about starting conditions (initial number of tenured Ph.D.s, number of institutions, etc.), population growth, economic growth, limiting conditions, and so on.

But... but... ya GOTTA have a license!

As Google shows off the latest and goofiest iteration of its Kroton-headed self-driving car, the world asks the single most important question:

What sort of license should be required to ride in the left* front seat?

Really, now: what kind of license is required to ride in a taxi?  Or a chauffeured limousine?  Or to take the bus?

If the car is actually self-driving, why should the occupant(s) need any license at all?

 

* Or right, according to national preference.

Not sure about the 'scientific' part, either

Article here, found via Slashdot:

US Is an Oligarchy Not a Democracy, says Scientific Study

Um.  It's supposed to be a republic, not a democracy.  Not the same thing.  A true democracy is not consistent with a Constitution that constrains government powers, because

Constitutional provisions that curtail the legislative power to govern in this area unquestionably do more harm than good.

(My, how useful that magic phrase is!)

So, try this one: it's an oligarchy, not a republic.  This is even worse, because the government is supposed to be subject to well-defined, published, and well-understood laws, and in fact it has a longstanding practice of interpreting those laws out of existence when they don't fit the agenda of the ruling class.

And just watch the collectivists (I should know; I was one of them, back in my college days) proclaim that their agenda is what the Median Voter wants, and that we need even bigger government, plus some form of divine intervention, to make it happen.

In fact, big-money oligarchy is the inevitable result of centralized government with power to mess with the economy.  Were the Tenth Amendment in effect, there would be little incentive for businessmen to buy the federal government.

Surprise!

CBS notices that, while official inflation is near zero and overall average pay is up...

Wages have long since stagnated for most workers (those outside the upper echelons of the government, finance, and entertainment sectors), while the cost of necessities (food, fuel, health care) has been increasing dramatically.

For those of us who pay attention, and live in the real world, the problems have been glaringly apparent for a long time.  Like, many years.  Decades even.

For the rich, there is no problem.  And, if your cost of living is dominated by purchases of new shiny things from China, it's actually been decreasing.  Hooray!

But if your cost of living is dominated by, oh, food and suchlike... well, life's tough.

You'll just have to tighten your belt, and buy domestic "Wagyu" beef instead of the real thing.

On a somewhat related note: maldistribution of employment has been a Silicon Valley problem since forever.  It's usually the case that everyone is either unemployed or overemployed.  As government policies drive headcount costs up, so that squeezing more work out of fewer employees makes ever more sense*?  The problem is spreading, and will only get worse.

 

* To the bean-counters, anyway.  With modern accounting practices, short-term financial considerations dominate business planning, which is why, for example, responsible businesses no longer do R&D.

Somehow I missed this one

Seems the Ear Leader thinks a law degree ought to take two years, not three.

Because, clearly, the biggest problem facing this country today is a scarcity of newly-minted, ⅔-educated lawyers.

Now, let me get this straight:

I mustn't be allowed to have a high-deductible, low-premium, catastrophic-only medical insurance policy, because if I got really sick I could end up having to spend as much as $10,000 of my own money on treatment.

Meanwhile, with the comprehensive health plan I have now (which, at last report, was the cheapest coverage someone my age could actually get in California, and that only because it's a grandfathered conversion from a group plan), I'm guaranteed to spend over $10,000 of my own money on premiums every smegging year.

This makes perfect sense.

Like Insty always says: "Unexpectedly!"

NBC reports that businesses all over the country expect to cut employer hours in response to the Affordable Care Prevention Act.

Gee, ya think?

I really need to put together the definitive list of conceits of central planners, though making it "definitive" might put it in the same class as the Great Task of Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged; here are just so many.... Anyway, one of the great and obvious conceits of central planners is this:

• People and organizations respond to the incentives intended by central planners, not to the incentives with which they are actually presented.

Trofim Denisovich, call your office!

The ongoing demise of Silicon Valley

Surprise!  Someone in the financial-news business has noticed that Apple doesn't innovate anymore.

Well, DUH!  Big, publicly-traded companies haven't innovated in a long time.  Their structure and modern accounting rules make it nigh-impossible.

Remember: NIH no longer stands for Not Invented Here.  These past many years, it's been No Inventing Here.  Engineers in established corporations, even moderate-sized ones, are forbidden to do anything new and exciting.  Management's attitude is: let the little guys do the innovating, and if they look like they might succeed we'll buy them.

But... the little guys are increasingly crowded out of Silicon Valley.  The old hotbed-of-innovation habitat is being bulldozed at an accelerating pace.  There's still plenty of talent here, but there's no room for their little shoestring-budget speculative ventures*.

As with much else, the collapse is currently in slow motion, and masked by an aggressive Potemkin economy.  I just hope the current "rebound" keeps on for another year, as I fumble for the striped handle.

 

* Yeah, there are hackerspaces, and TechShop.  Cool if you're doing an open-source group project, but have you looked at the cost of renting a private space for a group to work on something commercial and confidential, which needs to be left set up rather than being torn down and put away after each work session?

Yeah, that'll work.

So, the Ear Leader has a solution:

“Let’s put construction workers back to work repairing rundown homes and tearing down vacant properties,” Obama said in prepared remarks in Phoenix.

Um.

The visible signs of blight are a symptom - albeit one which creates positive feedback* - not a root cause.

This calls for dusting off the question: why don't libertarians invade Detroit, buy up a bunch of blighted properties at less-than-fire-sale prices, and build a prosperous free-market haven?

Answer: because, obviously, there's a reason those properties are blighted in the first place.  In the case of Detroit, there's an existing government in place, with taxes, regulations, and the authority (thought not the ability) to enforce them.  In blight zones, there's no point trying to enforce anything... but you can just bet that the moment an area starts looking safe and wealthy, the tax collectors and code enforcers will show up.

In general, fixing up blighted properties makes little sense unless the root cause of the blight can also be fixed, or the properties are to be put to some novel use.  It's like re-planting a field after a crop failure without addressing the soil fungus that killed off the first round of plants.

 

* In the engineering sense: it reinforces the trend, leading to uncontrolled oscillation, latch-up, or suchlike generally undesirable behavior.

And the amazing revelations keep coming...

It seems Science! has just discovered that cooperation is a good long-term evolutionary strategy.

Well, duh?  Survival of an individual, in the short term, may in some circumstances be enhanced by narrowly selfish behavior... but survival of a bloodline is a function of family and tribe, so longer-term reproductive success (at least for the likes of us apes) is largely a function of cooperation.

Next, someone will discover that free-market economics rests not on cutthroat competition but on extended voluntary (if often unconscious) cooperation.

Well, duh.

Great screaming headline of the day:

Psychopathic criminals have empathy switch

Subhead:

Psychopaths do not lack empathy, rather they can switch it on at will, according to new research.

Did anyone really believe that psychopaths completely lacked empathy?

Try this on for size: psychopaths have plenty of empathy, but they use it for evil instead of for good.

Effective cruelty requires empathy; without it, there's neither motivation nor direction.

(I'm no more a headologist than I am a rail engineer, but this is totally in Department of Duh! territory.)

Physics.

There's been a fatal high-speed train crash in Spain.

Barcepundit notes:

I'm no expert, but is seems to me that the driver was clearly overspeeding.

From the first linked article:

An engineer from the Adif state rail infrastructure company, who admitted he was unaware of the exact circumstances of the accident, explained on Wednesday that it would be very difficult for a train to derail simply due to excess speed, and that another factor – involving either the track or the train itself – must have come into play.

This is a rail engineer's opinion, is it?

Like Barcepundit, I'm no expert on trains, but from the video it looks like exactly what I'd expect to happen if a train went around a curve at well over twice the speed that stretch of track was designed for.  The rails exert ample centripetal force on the wheels on the outside-of-the-curve side... but everything above track level will be trying to continue in a straight line.  Too much force, and cars tip over and start flying off the rails, as the video shows.

Update: an actual physicist does the math.