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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 15th, 2023

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  • The only big loss was the money that went to the wedding.

    I learned recently the cost to getting married in my state and county is $60 ($20 for the license and $40 for the officiant to marry you and process the license to probate). That is less money than it cost for 2 tickets to see an evening movie and get concession stand food. I had no idea getting married could cost so little.




  • Did you just Google “Local Speed Dating” or something?

    Yep. There are usually companies that put these on, and as its their business, it will be the same companies doing many sessions throughout the year.

    I wasn’t sure if Speed Dating was still a thing (since I did it years ago), and I find it is still a thing!

    There’s one tonight in Los Angeles:

    But also midwest towns. Here’s one in Des Moines Iowa 2 days from now:


  • I give my mom credit. In the 80’s she found summer classes for me where I could learn about programming.

    In the early 80s we we NOT well off. However, our entire household chose to go without christmas (and went into debt) to buy a Commodore 64 computer. It allowed me to experiment, make mistakes, and learn in a safe environment. When I started using computers in school was already very comfortable with it. When I started in the working world, I was not only comfortable, but highly knowledgeable about using and fixing computers.

    My sibling and I are both successful IT professionals. I absolutely attribute having that computer (even a very under powered c64) in the house growing up.


  • Introvert here. I met my now introvert wife at speed dating.

    If you haven’t done it before, you are in a room (usually a rented out restaurant so its just for this event) with lots of tables. At each table is a woman. As a man, you are directed to sit at a specific numbered table where there is a woman seated (all the other men do the same to the individual table they are directed to). A bell rings. You have 5 minutes to talk to each other and learn as much as you can about each other. After 5 minutes, the bell rings, and the woman stay seated, and the man moves to the next higher numbered table. You have a card with the woman’s name on it and you should REALLY make notes, because you won’t remember which things you thought with each person. The women do the same with their cards.

    In under 2 hours each person now talked to 14-18 potential mates. At the end of the night you go online and mark which of the women you’re interested in hearing more from. If any of the women you mark also mark you on their side, you’re given an in-app communications channel and you can choose to share personal contact information from there.

    When you’re sitting at the table talking with a woman sometimes it seems like that bell rings as soon as you sit down and you wish you had more time. Those are the ones you mark on your card to talk more with. Sometimes, you’re 1 minute in and you’re dreading waiting though the next 4 min. Those you do not mark.

    I’d recommend you give Speed Dating a try.







  • Most laws aren’t retroactive. If you do the thing before it’s illegal, then you skated by. That could very easily be the answer here, especially as most all the physical automation is barely existent. If a company deploys now, they don’t pay the tax, but they will when they upgrade models.

    You’ll need to provide your definition of “physical automation” for the purposes of your argument. As it stands that is NOT clear, which is part of the quagmire of all the Automation Tax approaches.

    As to code automation, same rules apply. Excel macros get by, but I would apply the tax on companies that replace white collar jobs via SaaS or other applications as their core businesses model,

    What does this mean? If a company is still running on-prem MS Exchange servers for company email, then the law passes, then the company switches to Office365 for email instead, does your law hit that company with an Automation tax? If so, how would the tax be applied? Amount of spend on Office365? Amount spent on salaries of former MS Exchange administrators? How long would the tax apply? A year? Forever?

    What I’m also seeing is that all encumbant companies (shielded from the automation tax because they already put automation in place) would have an advantage forever against existing companies trying to make automation changes (and being hit with the tax).

    Another loophole I see is companies completely liquidating or selling to a newly formed company so that there are “no jobs lost to automation, because this company from day 1 has always used automation”.

    or for that line of buisness for vendors that do a lot of things. It would have to be refined as to where you draw the line, but you could.

    I don’t know what this means.

    Can you give a concrete example of your Automation tax? Situation before your law goes into place, the law passing, then the Automation tax a company would pay when they make a specific change in your example?


  • The automation tax that gates/etc proposed to fund UBI/social support networks is making more and more sense.

    I’m all for UBI, but the automation tax is a quagmire.

    In this theoretical new tax, tell me what qualifies to be taxed?

    • An Atlas autonomous robot? Sure, absolutely. How about instead a hydraulic arm that is controlled by a human? Previously there were 4 humans that moved the widget from A to B, but now they have 1 human operating a joystick for a net loss of 3 jobs. Is that taxed?
    • How about an Excel macro? Prior to the macro, there was one person filling in the spreadsheet the entire 8 hour workday. Now that person was replaced with an Excel macro that runs in 5 minutes with one click. That is automation too right? What would you tax? The cost of the person replaced?
    • Who pays the tax? A company that buys an Atlas robot after the law is passed? Absolutely. How about a company that bought Atlas robots 24 hours before the law passed? How about the company that bought them a year before the law passed? Now apply the Excel macro automation. Excel macros have around since the 1990s. Are you going to go back to the first macro run and tax every company retroactively? How about if the macro only does part of the work?

    Automation tax is a nice idea but a nightmare to try to make in policy. Additionally, it will have a stifling effect on any business efficiency efforts after it exists.

    If the tax is based upon workers losing their jobs to automation, it will have a massive knock on effect limiting new hires. A company would be very leery of hiring a worker if they could be accused (and taxed) of automation replacement when that worker is let go.



  • The point with factory work is that you don’t need half of what this robot can do if you change the plan of the factory a bit.

    So no I don’t think the idea here is for standard factory work.

    You’re changing the problem that is being solved. The CURRENT work process is to use a human with all the benefits and detriments of a human. The idea would be to drop one of these Atlas robots in without changing the work or work environment. Perhaps there is a more efficient human doing the work from 8am-5pm and only some work needed from 5pm-8am. An Atlas robot would be perfect use case here. You don’t have to redesign the work or the environment for a human or robot to switch out to do the same work.

    What you’re describing is changing the nature of the task or the environment to optimize for a robot.

    • Flat floors? Just use wheels instead of legs.
    • Short distance to cover? Drop the entire torso and head and just be an arm with a camera.

    Boston Dynamics already has that robot. Its called Handle:

    As you can see, its a wheeled robot with an arm, but this robot couldn’t do the task that the Atlas robot can in the video because it doesn’t have the fine motor control or fingers to grasp the engine covers, nor does Handle have the ability to deal with those soft pliable racks where Atlas is placing the covers.


  • At the moment it still looks like a technology demonstrator, but with what we saw in this video there are a small percentage of jobs it could likely do today replacing human workers.

    My guess is that the task we saw it doing is actually a human job today. The objects being moved from rack to rack were plastic engine covers. The racks are labeled with “Engine covers”. That is WAY too specific to be random. My guess is that they worked/are working with an automotive assembly company to identify tasks that humans do today that a robot could do tomorrow. The auto company likely provided the engine cover parts as well as the racks and described the parameters for the job.

    Even if you look at the Boston Dynamics robot and say that a human could do that faster/cheaper/better, consider that the robot works 24/7 with no sick days, vacations, or family emergencies. From a purely business perspective, the robot could be a game-changer for the better. From a societal view, this will have serious negative consequences to the people that our society will need to evolve to change for the better.



  • I mean, “give access” and “double your bitcoin” are somewhat textbook phrases for scams…

    You’re underscoring my point. I don’t think either of those two exact phrases were use in the scam video. In my post I was communicating the paraphrased things they were saying. Its like you’re finding the words in the word search because I circled them, then handed it to you, and you’re saying “there’s the word, its in the circle!”.

    I didn’t commit to memory the exact language used because as soon as I figured out it was a scam I had no reason to remember their exact words. If you go looking you might find an example of the video. Its beyond my interest though.