Slashdot has been crying wolf since they are a geek site and geeks seem to like that kind of thing and also like new technology, no matter the cost and issues.

However there have been actual depletions of IPv4 space of various kinds. First it was that all available networks were allocated to regional registrars. Now some of those regional registrars are allocating all their remaining addresses.

That doesn't mean doomsday, of course, it means that for any additional allocation to go on, something would have to be reclaimed. That has happened in the past, organizations have given back part of their allocations so they could be reassigned. It may lead to IPs being worth more. Company A might want some IPs and Company B could cut their usage with renumbering, NAT, etc so they'll agree to sell them.

Since IPs aren't used up in the sens of being destroyed, there'll never be some doomsday where we just "run out" but as time goes on the available space vs demand will make things more difficult. As that difficulty increases, IPv6 makes more sense and we'll see more of it.

We are already getting there in many ways. You see a lot of US ISPs preparing to roll it out, despite having large IPv4 allocations themselves, because they are seeing the need for it.

Next, Minecraft by the hour!

But that means it's no longer a market as we understand it, and no longer capitalism as it was envisioned.

When the money seeking other fortune is on a scale where it can't behave like micro-economics, it's time to observe the behaviors and ask how the system's working. Think of it as scalability issues. This has to be designed for. That's what the Fifth Silicon Valley might do, if they can be a little 'meta' about it.

We've already got many countries in the world where the capitalization of the country's private banks completely dwarfs the GDP of the actual country. When the market capitalization of companies expand to completely dwarf the GDP of all countries, the companies are now the world's government for good or ill. At that point (hopefully before that point!) you start asking what the purpose of the system is, what its dependencies are.

If market capitalization is the only thing, does it still exist in the absence of humans? If it requires humans to matter (it might not, you can have automated systems weighing the values of these things), what kind of humans does it require?

Would you say that it's a keen interest to replace systems based on human intervention, with systems based on algorithm and automation?

This can go two ways, it seems. On the one hand you can have automated systems competing to supplant entire industries while also maximizing their valuation as corporate entities: which means, taking all the money and keeping it, while putting entire industries out of work. For instance, transportation of goods. Truckers are a significant industry for employment and for the many subsystems that support them, but if you automate the whole thing with truck-sized robots (or national/global hypersonic cargo capsule networks) you can compel entire countries to turn to the automated solution by relying on its native efficiencies.

This quickly heads toward total collapse of society, as you've got very efficient goods distribution but only a few hundred kazillionaires who don't really need to buy many goods.

On the other hand, you can use the automation and efficiency gains to produce a world of leisure, and then deal with the problems of that as they arise. You have to sacrifice the score-keeping factor of capital, which also means the process of corporate valuation has to be re-thought: if nobody gets to win the grand prize that whole game changes. But, if feeding a human for a day (all agriculture, storage, foodmaking, transportation) used to cost $20 and with everything automated it costs $0.20, the nature of society changes radically. If letting a human ride any imaginable roller coaster requires the maintenance of expensive theme parks at $200 a day, but you can deliver exactly the same experience in VR for $0.002, reality starts to look like a mighty lame deal.

What I'm seeing is a keen interest to corner every possible market by automating it and starving it until it dies, in order to persuade Wall Street that you're a unicorn. This seems not quite ecologically sound, systemically, though I can't fault the accuracy of the perception. YES that's how the world works. We might want to have a look at all that. All of these systems, right down to markets and capitalism, are only human inventions

You're quite sure that turning the lights off is still up to you? An electric circuit has switches at both ends ;)

I suspect you're being sarcastic but you might as well be sincere for all the difference it makes. It's the system of continually ramping up the jackpots and pay-outs that is failing. It might be a natural consequence of market capitalism where people cannot fully inform themselves about all things.

In fact, with regard to public valuation, it's impossible for people to accurately inform themselves about this because it's purely a feedback loop of what other people think, making outright lying a winning strategy (especially when combined with bailing out before the thing crashes, like Enron did).

When you couple that with a culture that mandates socializing the losses from these games, to reward the wealthy people willing to play them and encourage them to play more and harder, truthfulness becomes completely unworkable and is at a devastating disadvantage. Basically you can't do that, it's a guarantee of tanking your valuation. Even if a person believes you, they're likely to conclude that other dumb investors will be tricked into acting against you, and therefore game theory says you've already lost.

So, literally, we do need to look at rewarding failures and low achievers simply in order to keep the wheels turning and the lights on at all. Making conscious decisions to reward the big winners inevitably means rewarding only the biggest liars, plus they're typically making a cash grab and running rather than building industries for the betterment of all.

Silicon Valley doesn't EMPLOY. The highest aspiration is to have a massive server farm minded by the CEO and one hapless sysadmin, replacing worldwide industries with millions of employees. You're right: it is over and people are gradually figuring that out. Whatever does end up replacing the system won't look like Silicon Valley. It's sort of a cancerous growth, diverting the resources of market capitalism into a feedback loop.

Perhaps it's because you are looking to become rich beyond the dreams of avarice selling people an address book, to-do lists and email mass marketing, using a splashy website with big excited-looking people from stock photography. I see that

and further that

I'm looking for content-acquiring behaviors but mostly what I'm seeing is a pattern where your company connects a service with a customer and is then paid instead of paying the service provider: plus if there are disputes, the service provider can skip arbitration or legal process and make the customer pay, not them for the damages, but pay your company instead. I guess that might be a hook for service providers, especially if they intend to file fraudulent damage reports. I'm not sure what you do about things like chargebacks: in my business I've found I'm relatively helpless against the things as credit card companies will do as they please.
Oh wait, I found the boilerplate:

Transferable, huh? Sublicense, adapt?

Me, I just code DSP plugins for people. I don't advertise and my approach is rather the opposite of yours: far from jockeying into position for an IPO, I think mostly in terms of cash flow and living frugally so I can continue while living up to my principles. I don't need to recruit anybody and in fact it's sort of useful for me to fly under the radar: I've even been shouted out as a 'great small plugin developer' by a Massive Corporate Industry Leader (who disguises himself as another indie, but he's definitely playing your game and not mine) because I'm unthreatening, too small to be a serious rival in IPO World.

I figure if you have an Evil Hollywood CEO archetype, it's for a reason. And if there's negative GDP this quarter, it's because there are too many of you people doing what you do. You are NOT advancing human civilization. And to the extent that you're trying to paint your Bizlifter business as something Facebook/LinkedIn etc. aren't already doing, you're lying. What you're proposing is not only already happening, it may not be a great thing to be happening.

In that light, the fact that the lie of Silicon Valley is failing, is a good thing.

I do understand the defensive nature of all that legalese: it's actually dangerous for me to mouth off against you because I'm somewhat vulnerable against incurring the wrath of some internet jerkwad who'll botnet me to death or sink me with massive fraudulent sales and chargebacks. That's the internet for you. That's Silicon Valley for you. The idea is to be not only the biggest jerk on the block, but so aggressive that other sociopaths can't damage you. It doesn't leave a lot of room for little Vermont craftsmen hacker types such as myself (original context for hacker, not 'script kiddy tyrant of all destruction').

This is the reason I'd want to demonize that 1%. Firstly, you're not in it, you just want to be and you're acting like them to fit in. Secondly, they're not advancing human civilization, they're impeding it. I'm afraid you've got things sort of backwards.

Digital audio has no "sound". It is where it becomes analogue and what happens after that that matters. Assuming no data errors, the only way anything in the digital chain affects the sound quality is by the interference and jitter it induces on the DAC and analogue components. This can be quite noticeable (and measurable), if you've ever heard the background mush from a cheap MP3 player or some mother board sound outputs through headphones, but a decent DAC would be well isolated and the clock would be at the DAC, and preferably be the audio master clock and not just phase-locked to something.

There may not be 'incentive' for them to lower rates, other than you know, the competition of multiple companies.

But what there is plenty of is resistance by regulators to those same companies trying to increase their rates just because they can. It's not legally mandated without significant regulation.

Insurance is one of the most studied and detailed fields out there. Because if the companies plan it wrong they owe a lot of money...

Either states will decide you don't need insurance if you have a self driving car, or a company will spring up that will insure self driving cars for a lot less money.

It is one area where capitalism can work. Lets say all the existing insurance underwriters charge $100/month for normal insurance based on human drivers. At that rate they can cover the rate of claims and make a nice profit. Say $20/month ends up being net profit after their operations costs and payout are factored in, and operations are another $20/month.

Well lets say that self driving cars then have a 0.01% accident rate compared to human drivers (it may end up being lower than that). That will drop their payouts by a similar amount, so from $60/person/month to $0.60/person/month. Ok but they decide to keep the price the same, just make more money.

Thing is, they'd still be really profitable at $41/month, instead of $100. Someone else will realize that, and work to steal their business. They might not go that low, maybe $80/month, but it'll happen. Then they'll try to get it back and so on and so forth.

Remember that your costs aren't just based on your specifically, they are based on actuary data of accident likeness. Sure you've had no accidents, but there is a statistical probability that you will. You are in the lowest risk group likely, but it is there. If self driving cars are much lower, rates can again be much lower.

Also, have you checked around? My rates haven't gone up in a long time. Maybe your company is just screwing you because they can, and you'd save if you took your business elsewhere.

For comparison purposes I pay about $350/6 months for $200k/$500k liability insurance on an old, cheap, car.

So what you're saying, is that the coming downsizing of the auto-insurance industry could, ahem, *crash* the stock market...

pouring into the atmosphere at a rate of more than 100x what nature produces

... man, go back to elementary school. That hasn't happened, isn't happening, and isn't going to happen. [Jane Q. Public, 2015-07-31]

Yes it is. As the NAS explains on page 6 here:

"In nature, CO2 is exchanged continually between the atmosphere, plants and animals through photosynthesis, respiration, and decomposition, and between the atmosphere and ocean through gas exchange. A very small amount of CO2 (roughly 1% of the emission rate from fossil fuel combustion) is also emitted in volcanic eruptions. This is balanced by an equivalent amount that is removed by chemical weathering of rocks."

So natural CO2 emissions are balanced, and our fossil fuel emissions are roughly 100x faster than volcanic emissions. That's why "actual science" shows that our current CO2 emissions rate is unprecedented over the last 300 million years.

And if you read the rest of that NAS document, you'd discover that "actual science" shows that our unprecedentedly rapid CO2 emissions are a cause for concern.

Found the audiophile.

They did it because that's how the company that makes the cables describes their test environment. They claim "clear unmistakeable" improvements in the audio quality in the setup Ars used, but only if you plug the cable in in the correct direction (denoted by an arrow on the connectors).

In fact the company claims that they determine which way to face the arrow by plugging the cable in and listening in both directions and choosing the best.

ETHERNET cable?

Oh come on.

The sad thing is, people will assume by this that people can't hear a difference between, say, speakers or playback devices. Way to just idiocrafy the world a tiny bit more, guys :P

Do you want the seats front facing or rear facing? 10-30lb or 20-50lb? Even then you're going to have to adjust it for your kid, and figure out what sort of bizarre adjustment scheme this particular seat uses. On some seats you have to take them apart to adjust past certain points. Uh oh, the kid always wants to sit behind the driver and the seat is installed on the passenger side.

Who is going to install and remove the seats every time someone calls for one? Are they going to have liability insurance in case they accidentally install a seat improperly and a kid is injured or dies?

And then the parents have to go back and make sure the seat is clean once they're done with the car. Kids are amazing at finding ways of making messes when you least expect it.

I think "have young kids" is one of the ares where the "car as a service" concept does not work. Not unless you drive only very rarely with the kids.