They didn't escape to the West to accumulate wealth... They escaped so they could live free lives without the fear of their neighbors or government. Money is probably one of the last reasons they'd leave. In fact, they'd be deemed "economic refugees" and refused access to most of the Western world.

From watching the news in the past couple weeks, I can't help but wonder if violent revolt and revolution aren't just around the corner.

Police are viewed as the front line agents of the government. The government is viewed as an agent of the rich. An attack on the Police is an attack on the government and therefore on the rich. We're being led to believe its racially motivated, and it is to some extent. But if everyone was able to put food on the table and their kids in higher education, we would be much less likely to have disaffected individuals from marginalized groups(**) getting so angry and losing all hope that they lash out.

** with universal basic income and access to education one might argue that no one is marginalized!

Blame your local unions for lack of qualified plumbers and electricians. They restrict the number of Master trades and the number of apprentices and journeymen that they can take on and train. It's essentially a monopoly asserting its power for the good of its establishment and to the detriment of everyone else. My cousin's son is a fantastic plumber, but one of the old guys in the guild needs to die to free up spot
Regardless, those jobs are on the chopping block too. Most of the work is pretty simple. Wiring a junction box or soldering a pipe will eventually be done by something that is immune to heat and insulated from electric shocks... Even the design of those systems will probably be done by an expert system soon. Heck, if a program can auto-route and optimize my 10M gate FPGA it sure as hell can do a better job than the idiots who designed the HVAC, water and wiring in my current house.

Menial labor jobs could be completely eliminated within a 50 years. UBI might be a way to start that transition.

Construction, manufacturing, garbage collection, maintenance and similar are all on the chopping block. There is even talk of automation of many software development activities and high-knowledge professions like medicine and engineering. When I look at my role as a coder, data modelling, product design and requirements analysis are the only bits that I think might be very difficult for a non-sentient entity to do. Everything else could be done more efficiently by a machine. That's a probably 80% of today's jobs, gone or totally changed. The only activities that I don't anticipate being replaced are the truly human ones that harness our innate curiosity and creativity: art, music, law, research and exploration.

As a society we need to figure out how to keep the everyone engaged and interested in life. They need to be doing productive things or boredom will give rise to unrest and revolution will follow. The Romans knew this, "Bread and Circuses" kept their citizen populace occupied, while the menial labor tasks were 'automated' by slaves (who were treated as robotic minions essentially). We have the power to move the entire world population past the work required as part of the struggle to survive. What will they do next?

I think, we need to start transitioning to a cultural Renascence. A focus on art, music and creativity instead of work may very well be needed as the 'work' part is going to be hard to come by. If interplanetary and interstellar travel becomes viable, the focus could be on exploration and colonization. We need something to work at together to achieve, otherwise we will start to work against each other.

Baloney. Nothing the Kock bros do is for the Greater Good(tm), they are in it for themselves alone. If the Kock empire were to vaporize overnight, I would be shocked if a statistically measurable number of "the poor" or "small businesses" had any negative change in their lives.

FYI, BlackBerry did NOT use low cost manufacturing houses at any point until John Chen came along. At that point the low cost manufacturers were already cleaning up their act after the Foxconn suicide nets hit the news.

Why does Apple get a pass when everyone raked BlackBerry over the coals when they tried and for a while succeeded in blocking foreign Govs demands for access to BBM servers in their territories?

I don't get it. Unless this is some sort of perverse American rationalization of the pursuit of the almighty dollar trumping non-American's rights to privacy.

The number of shit guzzling apologists here is truly shocking.

Hipster-capocalypse!

Seriously! Ahhmmmm-nom-nom-nom.

The crucial element here is the use of waves (in this case sound).

The basic physics likely points to the possibility of using modulated light waves (or x-ray, gamma ray waves). Those propagate quite well in a vacuum. The question will be how much energy is needed to achieve the necessary wave density to manipulate objects.

This is a pretty cool, imho.

Its an issue because Samsung's voice recognition wasn't done on the TV. They shipped the captured audio to servers in their back office, unencrypted iirc. So your intimate small-talk with your partner is recorded live and sent out to some nameless destination free for all to listen to. I don't know about you, but I consider that an incredible invasion of privacy.

Don't let the NDP's smooth talking fool you.

Unless you're a factory worker making less than the Canadian average income, they'll likely fund their spending on cash from your wallet. As you're on slashdot, can format your posts to be readable and don't have any egregious spelling errors, I suspect you will end up in the payer's pile.

We once again have a overflowing cup of political leadershiT. Czar Harper, Comrade Mulcair and Untested Trudeau. The wheel of fate is broken and stuck pointing at, "Here thar be Dragons."

I thought 'Rising to the level of your incompetence' meant the more the opposite. Dumb-as-a-post employees either get fired or they possess, "soft skills valued in management" and get promoted. The more 'soft skills' (ability to bullshit, take credit for others' work, brown-nose, etc) the higher you rise. This article seem to imply that promotions are based on technical skill and that you get promoted until your skill matches your employment level. In my experience, that is almost never the case.

... has begun, eeeexcelllllent.