By the time the Cray-1 was designed, Seymour Crays children where in college. This might have applied to when he was designing the CDC 6600 when the children were younger. I know this because the Cray kids were a couple years ahead of me in high school. There are a lot of stories like this put out by John Rollwagen to build up Seymour's design creds.
You need to think of the cost of this kind of treatment at this stage as R&D. If it works thousands of people will benefit, have longer lives and contribute back more than the lifesaving treatment will cost.
we can justify having an option for people’s self preservation instincts without having to make up that fairy tale, more elderly humans will probably be a net negative
It seems like you're the negative one here. There is nothing inherently negative about living longer - just potential to have learned far more than others from experience. Any biological issues with existing for longer can have solutions, for which may be tackled better with more good minds put forth to the task.
but it is illuminating to see a passionate audience’s reading comprehension ability
it says treatments and extending life is desirable and doesn't need a reason and the reason presented would be a waste of energy to debate and quantify while doing so isnt even necessary, read it again until it makes sense that way
You’re asserting that “more elderly people is a net negative” without giving a supporting argument.
So, I think all the prayer above you is saying they disagree. And without you making the effort to support your kind of inflammatory statement… it seems perfectly reasonable to me that they would not support there point other than to say they disagree.
I think he’s implying that everyone dies, everyone will ultimately live through some life arc, and letting people survive a fatal illness invariably causes the average age of the population to rise and at some point the costs outweigh the benefits. So what’s the point of a longer arc of life?
My personal counterpoint: pancreatic cancers tend to strike anywhere in adulthood, so survival could yet lead to many years of productive life. Also, having grandparents is good, even if they’ve retired. Maybe especially if they’ve retired.
Another point to indicate that the elderly do contribute back: if the elderly were a net negative while we evolved (which involved a lot more physical labor than typical work does today), there'd be selection pressures against the genes that confer longevity. And yet we've evolved in a way that the typical person will live long past the age of reproductive viability.
Concretely, humans aren't that much smarter than chimps. We did reach a point, however, where knowledge can be transferred and processed efficiently across individuals ("society"). The elderly play a net positive role in facilitating and maintaining these knowledge transfer networks, particularly to their kin.
An additional personal counterpoint: I know three very productive knowledge workers over the age of 70 who all say they'll stop working when they're dead.
My wife and I can only both work because our elderly parents take on childcare responsibility for us (because paid childcare is very often extremely expensive and very often very overcrowded), and our parents teach and enrich the lives of our children immeasurably.
Take care of the elderly. Build systems and habits of care and compassion that you want to be able to rely upon when you get old.
I think you are all in agreement; I interpreted the above comment as implying the exact opposite - don't make economic arguments that people saved will contribute more, because elderly people may not actually do that, but that doesn't mean it's not worth it on other grounds, precisely as you are doing here.
I read yieldrcv as saying that people not dying is good on its own merit, so we don't need an economic argument. The survival instinct is enough justification on its own.
We may not need to contrive some reason why saving lives will actually save us money, and therefore saving lives is good.
If you need an economic reason to save lives, you will have to do incredible gymnastics to justify medical treatment for old people, for instance.
So don't do the acrobatics. We can just say that medicine is good, actually.
yes, jtlienwis is making an economic argument to justify the treatment. yieldcrv is arguing that the economic argument may be invalid (i.e. it's a "fairy tale" to believe the treatment will pay for itself through economic activity, but there are non-economic arguments to justify treatment (i.e. "we can justify having an option for people’s self preservation" - the treatment is an option for self-preservation and self-preservation can be justified on other grounds)
I don't think the top level comment was inherently about money, though. "Contribute back" can mean non-monetarily, or even be implying an indirect monetary gain from them contributing non-monetarily to their families.
Economics is devilishly difficult to really efficiently predict. More reliable lifespans and a larger elderly population can affect the total flow of money in ways nobody can properly imagine, positively or negatively.
From a younger perspective, the effect of eliminating cancers from the equation implies a lot. What is more expensive to the world, years of cancer treatments and palliative care to somebody in their 70s, or somebody living healthily through to 90 years old before dying from heart failure? What about the family cost of caring for a sick elderly relative?
Not OP, but I think the gist was more about not needing to justify life-saving treatment in terms of cost-effectiveness over someone's life - people just want to live as long as possible, and that's OK in spite of the 'net negative' of increasing the aging population that it can result in.
I think the accuracy of that 'net negative' assumption is definitely not a given and that's what most folks are reacting to.
You haven't thought this through and need more life experience to understand why this is important. When the experience comes you will not enjoy it. You will be lesser for it but you will understand.
States should stick to running a state patrol, maybe a university or two and a court system. Otherwise, stay out of peoples way. Don't collect huge bribes from cable providers to limit competition.
I have one firm rule these days. No rent seeking behaviors. This avoids talking to phone centers in India or some other foreign country, where the person on the other end of the phone barely speaks English to try to get the service cancelled or to fight aggressive billing.
When they said there were thousands of derailments each year in the U.S. i found a source on the internet that said the total for all derailments in Japan in 2020 was a grand total of 6.
Basically we’re averaging 1,704 derailments a year between 1990 and 2021, and likely very few of them are significant since last year per the article there were 4 deaths.
So, question: what is the legal definition of a derailment and does it differ between here and Japan?
When trains are mainly used for transporting goods, derailment is unlikely to cause deaths. Not the case for Japan, and that's probably half of the explanation for why it's different.
Not to mention how these heavyweights will crush the hell out of our highways.
Road damage is to the 4th power of axle weight. Will a fleet of electric cars and trucks we will be spending a huge amount on new concrete and tar. Both are significant CO2 sources.
I mean anyone who legitimately drives an EV to help the environment is deluding themselves. Not only is car pollution a negligible fraction of overall emissions, but it's far more harmful and resource intensive to get materials required to make EVs, and there are plenty of second order effects such as this and power generation required that result in even more emissions.
This is basically the Big Oil propaganda line, and it's been pretty thoroughly debunked. EVs are way more environmentally friendly than ICE vehicles over their lifespan.
One semi-truck does the damage of over 200 Hummer EVs. As long as semis are allowed on highways, I think the effect you're describing will be negligible, especially since the really heavy EVs like that are expensive luxury ones, and the mass-market ones are all way lighter.
Damage to roads is proportional to the 4th power of axle weight, which is about 4500 pounds for the Hummer EV and about 17000 pounds for a semi, and (17000/4500)^4 is a little over 200.
Maritime Law had a provision for salvors that saved ships in distress from sinking. If a salvor saved a ship from sinking, they were entitled to a percentage of the worth of a ship. Maybe terrestrial law needs something similar in the case of uninsured building on fire.
With private fire brigades, there was sometimes a monetary reward for being first to the scene. Sounds like a good incentive, right? But it resulted in competition between companies, to the point that they would sabotage each other. The article itself has some examples, and there are similar ones from United States' history.
I imagine some similar issues have happened at sea, but it seems harder to take advantage of and make profit on, since it probably wasn't too common for ships with expensive cargo to sink. And even if they did, it would be hard to guarantee getting there in time. Whereas in a city, fires are a pretty regular occurrence.
Interestingly, something similar happens with maritime law as to what was alluded to in the article and in this post. Similar to the competition and chaos caused by "First to respond and put it out", certain salvage companies will ignore Coast Guard warnings that a boat is already accounted for, that the insurance company has already hired a salvage company to reclaim the boat, and instead other salvage companies will try to hurry out to the boat and claim it. Similar to the Terry Pratchett quote, salvage companies will fortuitously find that your boat detached from a mooring ball and drifted to sea if it's left unmanned for long periods of time.
So while a pretty good system, it's not without its flaws and perverse incentives.
At least in the US - most areas assess the value of the structure and the value of the land separately.
I'd be in favor of providing a lien on the existing title in the amount of the structure's value (or some relatively high percentage of it, maybe depending on how much is salvaged by the firefighters) if the fire department puts out an uninsured building.
There's no reason to let it burn - it's a waste of resources, big source of pollutants, and a risk to neighboring areas. But I also think you can't reward property owners for taking a gamble that their property won't catch on fire.
Or, god forbid, protect the general welfare of the population of Yahoo County by having a fire service?
The government has the ability to tax for such services. As a partner who own a piece of a rental property in a ex-urban town, the volunteer fire company levies a tax that amounts to $300/year (based on valuation) which covers 2-3 towns with fire, ems and paramedic services.
The problem comes when the only government is the county - it may simply be impractical to have a firefighting crew that can reach anything in a reasonable amount of time. (There are sparse counties in the US that can’t be crossed by a firefighting helicopter in less than 60 minutes).
Voters in the county in question did eventually approve "universal" fire response, either small prepaid fee or post-paid full cost after response, but it sounds as though they won't consider converting the fees into standard taxes until 70% of residents have opted in to protection. Quite a few people who live and vote there seemingly have no interest in fire service.
The “farmers” didn’t want to deal with a 0.13% property tax increase.
A place where the people who control the place are so reactionary and regressive that a piddly increase in a tax levy requires a 70% supermajority is a place to move away from. Gross.
Sure - but that doesn't cover the cases where we clearly have folks who do not pay, or regions that vote in ways to clearly place no priority on those shared services.
And in your case - the results are actually very similar (What do you think happens when you fail to pay your city/county taxes? A lien on your title happens...)
So again - I'm all for creating shared services and paying for them, but some folks aren't. In those cases I'd still rather not see people's homes burn (for all sorts of reasons) and this is a meaningful incentive to put the home out.
Except in this case - it very literally isn't the firefighters damn job. They have not been hired to put out this fire. Full fucking stop. And just so we're fully clear here - this is a job that is extremely risky to personal health and safety.
Honestly - I think your attitude here is actually far more childish than mine. You're preaching about what's right and moral - I'm discussing practical details and incentives that might make people actually go do a thing.
My attitude is hardly making an assumption that life is fair - it's about making sure that service (fire fighting) has a space in which to exist at all.
Because what we're really talking about here is a social contract...
When it becomes clear that violating the social contract has no downside - many more folks start to do it, and we rapidly end up in a spot where the company that wrote the contract (Us - we the freaking people wrote the contract) are bankrupt. And now not only do the people not paying not have a fire service... NO ONE has a fire service. Because few people were willing to chip in the money when they got the benefit for free.
So back to your silly, silly question:
"Is it fair that you paid for firefighting and your neighbor didn’t but still had their house saved during a fire?"
That's absolutely relevant outside of a single isolated case. It might not matter for one instance - it matters a whole freaking lot in aggregate.
We probably have better financial structures in 2022 than that, like insurance (or taxes that fund professional firefighting, like NYC).
Besides: it isn't clear we should incentivize untrained professionals to run into burning buildings. Ships are somewhat unique in that the people who are saving you are also sailors, and are presumably at least minimally qualified to help another ship in distress.
Look on Hackaday for "Why do you need to use decoupling caps". I am not seeing any talk of decoupling caps in any of this persons writeups. Maybe they are there and I am just not seeing them. It used to be when designing with LS ttl you needed one per chip to make sure switching noise did not get onto your power supply rails.
Otherwise, a great project for learning.
The decoupling caps are there in the schematics shown alongside the symbols for the IC power inputs which is a common way of doing things.
IDK why something as fundamental as decoupling caps should be mentioned here at all though, anyone sufficiently knowledgeable to make use of this information would know that they're required already.
