No combination of alternative fuels can or will ever replace the 160 exajoules of energy that industrial civilization currently consumes each year. Attempting to do so will result in ecological disaster. Thorium nuclear would get us near that again, but it's not likely to be something we do in the case of a complete industrial civilization collapse.

So what happens is that we "reboot" to a smaller scale civilization with a limited population. No matter what happens, there's still a lot of refined metal, particularly copper wire, laying around so we will probably have electricity no matter what. We also have plenty of mirrors that can be re-purposed for mini-smelting operations and water purification. Moreover, there will still be plenty of functional practical machines and devices. Cars will be a valuable source of alternators for electricity generation. Simple items, like stainless steel tables and bowls will last for hundreds of years. Steam is likely to make a comeback.

We won't reboot, and the population bottleneck from 2100 to 2200 may be quite severe, but some will survive and muddle through.

They can be identified and their locations revealed. You take the good with the bad.

You're dang tootin!

They all have the same revelation, "Gosh, we can save money by outsourcing!" but since they don't have to think about the details (and maybe *can't* think about details if some of the one's I've met are any indication), they implement the strategy, move on to a new position in 18 months during the next re-org, and leave the mess for someone else to clean up. The next newly minted moron MBA becomes a hero by undoing the mess (i.e. hiring local), gets his bonus, and then he moves on in 18 months and the cycle starts over again.

But spelled phonetically (funetikle?) and restricted to a basic vocabulary of 1000 or 2000 of the most frequently used words. Probably more than enough. More complex thoughts could be constructed out of those components.

That may be. I haven't tracked salaries recently, but I know we're offering programming jobs to H1-Bs at 60K. The advantage, from management's perspective is that these guys are like indentured servants. They're unlikely to quit, or complain.

Or as close as they can possibly get, and the H1-B is edging fairly close.

Of course there's plenty of domestic STEM talent, just not for $45K a year with no benefits.

Microsoft has a unique talent for taking obvious, useful or innovative technology and then either making it unusable (Winoows 8), or unsalable (Any Windows phone incarnation). In this case, the latter turned out to be cheaper.

I agree with this on principle, however, in practice, it would mean we don't deal with any other country outside of Europe. Impractical.

The world has different ideas of morality than Americans. Even Americans have different ideas about morality within the country. Tolerance, oddly enough, means tolerating the intolerant.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Glitch...

...when you can fuck up the world? Yes, let's put an MBA with a BA in philosophy and medieval history in charge of the USA. I mean, wouldn't *you* give the nuclear codes to the MBAs in your company? What could possibly go wrong?

Their whole mindset still makes me want to puke.

Obfuscated crap. Techno-machismo teens playing games trying to get their code into the least number of characters and the least amount of memory. I've had to fix or test so much of this junk and it's still just plain stupid.

The *human* part of the system is what *matters* and that includes the code interface. First, I want comments not about *what* is happening. I can read that. I need to know *why* it was done, so I don't undo it, or I can do something different safely. Comments should be one liners, limited to "why" and sometimes "how".

If adding a variable aids readability, add the fucking variable! Shove all the results into a meaningful, readable variable name and then shove *that* into your function argument, not some long series of nested function. It's not the 90s. You don't have to save memory! Memory is there to make your code readable. Use it!

Ok, rant over. I'm going back to work now.

Somehow, the actual answer, commonly referred to as, "money" never seems to come up.

If STEM salaries are low COMPARED TO THE LOCAL COST OF LIVING, then there will be few interested in STEM careers. A smart person can become an engineer (relatively low pay) or a doctor (relatively high pay) or a Wall Street trader (relatively high pay). Hell, even Dentists and Optometrists can sometimes beat a starting engineer's salary.

Maybe, just maybe, capitalism is working and people are choosing to put their efforts where the money is. Maybe, just maybe, people are choosing NOT to compete with workers in India making $10 an hour when they could be choosing a career that generates $100 an hour.

Maybe, just maybe, the fucking morons who keep writing these hand-wringing articles should learn to see the the obvious thing in front of their noses.

FTFY

Social media trolls have been with us for years. On the good side, they're trivial to spot and ignore - a fact completely lost on their employers.

The DHS has quietly become the KGB, with all that this implies.

There's a reason that the current Russian dictator comes directly from the old KGB. There's a reason that one of our recent former presidents came directly from the CIA.

For this reason, I'll make a big bet, that no matter what kind of election carnival is held, Jeb Bush gets elected as the next president. As the former CIA director's son, he's on their team. He's already vetted. No candidate, at this point, has a chance of winning unless they're security service friendly.